My
heart is in anguish within me
the terrors of death have fallen upon me.
Fear and trembling come upon me,
and horror overwhelms me.
And I say, “O that I had wings like a dove!”
And I would fly away and be at rest;
yea, I would wander far,
I would lodge in the wilderness,
I would haste to find me a shelter from
the raging wind and tempest.

It is
not an enemy who taunts me—
then I could bear it;
it is not an adversary who deals insolently with me—
then I could hide from him.
But it is you, my equal, my companion, my familiar friend.
We used to hold sweet converse together;
within God’s house we walked in fellowship.

My
companion stretched out his hand against his friends,
he violated his covenant.
His speech was smoother than butter,
yet war was in his heart;
his words were softer than oil,
yet there were drawn swords.

Psalm 55
RSV

Inanna
LaFevre

“This
in turn requires of us that we risk the difficult task of continuing to
speak vulnerably and personally about our own life and the lives of
other women, while rejecting tendencies toward victimization,
bitterness, self-pity, or self-indulgence. To unveil the damage caused
by systemized cruelty, stultification, indifference, and daily denials
of one’s humanity is itself a painful and dangerous act; to do so
while refusing to become obsessed with the atrocities committed against
one’s self and one’s people is an even more arduous challenge.”

Robin
Morgan
from The Anatomy of Freedom: Feminism,
Physics and Global Politics, 1982

Violence
against women is a universal problem that daily affects millions of
women of every age, race and class. The scope and severity of this
gender violence is testament to the low status of women throughout the
world. In almost every society on earth women live in fear of male
violence, and limit and shape their lives according to this fear. The
violence to which women are subjected includes overt physical acts such
as murder, rape, battery, incest, and sexual abuse; psychological abuses
such as harassment, intimidation, threats, belittling, and other verbal
assaults; and institutional and social violence such as genital
mutilation, wife burning, female infanticide, discrimination and
neglect.

Most of
the violence to which women are subjected is socially, culturally and
even legally condoned. But because gender violence is such an accepted
part of the fabric of life in most countries there has been little
concerted effort to honestly address the problem at national and
international levels.

According
to Charlotte Bunch, “Gender violence is the most pervasive and
insidious human rights abuse in the world....If any other group were so
systematically tortured, battered, and killed, society would declare a
civil emergency.”1
U.S.
Senator Joseph Biden made this statement: “If the leading newspapers
were to announce tomorrow a new disease that, over the past year had
afflicted from 3 to 4 million citizens, few would fail to appreciate the
seriousness of the illness. Yet when it comes to the 3 to 4 million
women who are victimized by violence each year the alarms ring
softly.”2

The
disease Biden is referring to is domestic violence. In the United
States a woman is beaten every fifteen seconds; and four women are
killed by their batterers every day.3
According to former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, domestic
violence is a leading cause of injury to women. In a study among low
income women in Philadelphia, domestic violence was found to be the
leading cause of injury between the ages of fifteen and forty-four, more
common than automobile accidents, muggings and cancer deaths combined.4

Gender
violence is a global tragedy which has many faces. It is an
international pandemic on the scope of AIDS. As health professionals,
people of faith, or concerned citizens, we must demand that violence
against women be treated as a human rights violation with major public
health consequences.

As Dr.
Koop stated so clearly:

“Violence
against females is everyone’s responsibility. It is the responsibility
of governments at the national, state and community levels. It is the
responsibility of legislators and parliamentarians, city and village
councils or panchayat leaders. It is the responsibility of the health
professionals, including doctors, nurses and other health professionals
as well as hospitals and clinics. It is the responsibility of
educational institutions and educators; the communications media; the
church and clergy." 5

This
guide expands on issues raised by women in the video, Violence
Against Women: A Violation of Human Rights. It places violence
against women in the context of a public health problem by addressing
the mental and physical health consequences women experience as a result
of violence. It also includes informational resources, ideas for action,
and organizations to contact. Our intent is to provide information and
ideas that will encourage and assist efforts to eliminate violence
against women at all levels around the world.

Inanna
LaFevre

CONTENTS

The many
forms of violence against women are interrelated in complex cycles of
cause and effect and do not fall into neat separate categories. However,
for the sake of organization this guide is divided into four main
themes: Domestic Violence, Rape and Other Sexual Crimes, Economic and
Legal Discrimination, and Genital Mutilation. Appendices follow
that provide information on organizations working to confront violence
against women.

Appendices
Men Working to Stop Violence
Clergy and Churches Confront Violence
Women Taking Action
More Organizations
The Legal Front
National
International
Internet Resources
References

About the Hearing
List of Presenters
(video - women
who testified)
Acknowledgements

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

1.
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

BATTERY/AGGRAVATED
ASSAULT

“Battery
is the most significant cause of injury to women in this country. It is
ironic that the first shelter for battered women was created 100 years
after the congressional law to prevent cruelty to animals was passed.”

C.
Everett Koop U.S. Public Health Service 1989

Today,
animals in the United States are still given better protection than
women. Although up to fifty percent of homeless women and children in
this country are fleeing domestic violence, there are three times as
many animal shelters as there are shelters for battered women.6
Abusing an animal is always considered a felony, however, even though
“injuries that battered women receive are at least as serious as
injuries suffered in 90% of violent felony crimes, under state laws they
are almost always classified as misdemeanors.”7

The
following example from Oklahoma clearly shows how laws reflect national
attitudes. Police sergeant Wayne M. Hlinicky faces a possible five years
in prison, a $5,000 fine, and discharge from the police force for
allegedly kicking a cat. Meanwhile, Sergeant Aaron Watson may only face
ninety days in jail for reportedly shoving his girlfriend’s head
against a wall, kicking her, and dragging her by the hair. 8

It is
difficult to categorize the types of violence women experience, because
there is much crossover between them. Domestic violence, the subject of
this chapter, is not limited to assault and battery. It can also include
rape, verbal abuse and intimidation, and economic and psychological
control, among other things. While all of these forms of violence take
place within the domestic sphere, they are certainly not limited to that
realm. Women can and do suffer these abuses at the hands of strangers as
well as family members.

The
American Medical Association characterizes domestic violence as a
“pattern of coercive behaviors that may include repeated battering and
injury, psychological abuse, sexual assault, progressive social
isolation, deprivation, and intimidation. These behaviors are
perpetrated by someone who is or was involved in an intimate
relationship with the victim. Although some women are successful in
escaping a violent relationship after the first assault, most abuse is
recurrent and escalates in both frequency and severity. In addition, a
woman’s independence may be compromised by her partner’s need to
dominate her and control many aspects of her life: He may restrict her
access to food, clothing, money, friends, transportation, health care,
social services or employment.”9

Probably
the most common form of domestic violence is battering or “wife
beating.” This is such a common occurrence worldwide that many people
consider it normal or inevitable as the following comments reflect:

“In
some parts of our country wife beating is so common that women begin to
worry if their husband doesn’t beat them. They think maybe he
doesn’t love them anymore or he has another woman.”10

In
Papua New Guinea during a parliamentary debate on wife beating a
parliamentarian made this comment: “Wife beating is an accepted
custom. We are wasting our time debating this issue.”11

Some
men in the U.S. now proudly threaten their partners with this jeer:
“I will O. J. you if you don’t watch out.”12

A
man in the U.S. who admits to beating his wife made this comment: “Every
once in a while you have to take her on a little trip to knuckle
junction. When she comes back she is just like she was on the
honeymoon.”13

These
statistics from around the world give some indication of the scope of
this problem:

In
Beijing a recent survey revealed that 23% of husbands have beaten their
wives.14

Most
official statistics are taken from national crime surveys which largely
rely on FBI, police and emergency room reports. However, many women
never report their experiences except maybe to friends, family, clergy,
etc. Even when reporting to hospitals and doctors for care, women often
cite reasons other than domestic violence for their injuries out of
shame or fear. In many cases they think they will not be believed,
especially if the perpetrator is a well known and respected person in
the community (i.e., Nicole Brown Simpson and other celebrity wives).

The
following statistics reflect the nature of domestic violence in the U.S.16

There
are at least four million reported incidents of domestic violence
against women every year. Almost 20% of these are aggravated assaults in
the home.

Women
are six times more likely than men to be victims of violent crime in an
intimate relationship. In 1991, more than 90 women were murdered every
week. Nine out of ten were murdered by men.

Weapons
are used in 30% of domestic violence incidents.

In 95%
of all domestic violence assaults, crimes are committed by men against
women.

Although
more than one million women seek medical treatment each year for
injuries caused by their husbands, ex-husbands or boyfriends, doctors
correctly identify the injuries as resulting from battering only 4% of
the time.

Medical
expenses from domestic violence total at least three to five billion
dollars annually. Businesses forfeit another hundred million in lost
wages, sick leave, absenteeism and non-productivity.

Abusive
husbands and lovers harass seventy-four percent of employed battered
women at work, either in person or over the telephone causing 20% to
leave their jobs.

More
than 53% of male abusers beat their children.

Seven
to 15% of pregnant women are battered in a study of poor inner city
women in Baltimore17.

As
violence against women becomes more severe and more frequent in their
homes, children very often experience an increase in physical violence
by the male batterer.

Some of
the physical repercussions of violence to women are obvious just from
these statistics, but many of the health impacts are often overlooked or
dismissed. The health consequences of domestic violence are complex and
extensive and include both physiological and psychological
manifestations.

The
following AMA guidelines identify specific behaviors which can help
survivors, health profes- sionals, and others to recognize and
acknowledge that violence has occurred.

PHYSICAL
ABUSE: Physical abuse is usually recurrent and escalates in
both frequency and severity. It may include the following:

Pushing,
shoving, slapping, punching, kicking, choking

Assault
with a weapon

Holding,
tying down, or restraining the woman

Leaving
the woman in a dangerous place

Refusing
to help when she is sick or injured

EMOTIONAL
OR PSYCHOLOGICAL ABUSE may precede or accompany physical
violence as a means of controlling through fear and degradation. It may
include the following:

Threats
of harm

Physical
and social isolation

Extreme
jealousy and possessiveness

Deprivation
and/or intimidation

Degradation
and humiliation

Calling
her names and constantly criticizing, insulting and belittling her

False
accusations, blaming her for everything

Ignoring,
dismissing, or ridiculing her needs

Lying,
breaking promises, destroying trust

Driving
fast or recklessly to frighten and
intimidate her

SEXUAL
ABUSE in violent relationships is often the most difficult aspect of
abuse for women to discuss. It may include any form of forced sex
or sexual degradation, such as:

Trying
to make her perform sexual acts against her will

Pursuing
sexual activity when she is not fully conscious or is not asked or is
afraid to say no

Hurting
her physically during sex or assaulting her genitals, including use of
objects or weapons intravaginally, orally, or anally

Coercing
her to have sex without protection against pregnancy or sexually
transmissible diseases

Criticizing
her and calling her sexually degrading names

Clinical
studies underscore the prevalence of domestic violence and its
relationship to continued or repeated trauma and consequent medical and
psychiatric problems. More than half of all nonfatal assaults result in
injury, and ten percent of the victims require hospitalization or
emergency medical treatment. Seventy-five percent of battered women
first identified in a medical setting will go on to suffer repeated
abuse.

According
to various studies, battered women account for:

Approximately
11% of women seeking care for any reason in emergency departments, the
majority of whom are seen by medical or other nontrauma services

19-30%
of injured women seen in emergency departments

14% of
women seen in ambulatory-care internal medicine clinics (28% have been
battered at some time)

25% of
women who attempt suicide (50% of black women who attempt suicide)

25% of
women utilizing a psychiatric emergency service

23% of
pregnant women seeking prenatal care

45-59%
of mothers of abused children

58% of
women over 30 years old who have been raped

50%
of all homeless women19

BATTERING
DURING PREGNANCY

Surveys
of health care providers in four states indicated that between four and
seventeen percent of pregnant women had experienced violence within the
last twelve months.20

For
many reasons, pregnant women are particularly vulnerable. Though
pregnancy is often thought to be a time of joy and hope, women go
through many difficult changes both physically and psychologically. At
precisely the time when they need the most support, many women receive
violent abuse instead. According to the National Organization for
Obstetric, Gyneco- logical, and Neonatal Nurses, women who are battered
often find that the violence increases during pregnancy. For many women
the abuse begins during the first pregnancy. An NAACOG newsletter
reports that approximately seven percent to fifteen percent of all
pregnant women are physically abused. In the same article Jacquelyn
Campbell, RN, states, “It’s hardly ever confined to pregnancy,
though if it starts during pregnancy it will most likely continue after
the child is born.” Campbell also noted, “Ironically, it is
often the normal changes of pregnancy that trigger the first episodes of
abuse or fuel recurring abuse. Some men feel threatened by the emotional
changes a woman experiences during pregnancy and become jealous of her
deepening bond with the baby.”21

Another
article noted that “two out of three pregnant emergency room trauma
patients were found to be victims of battering, often with the first
physical abuse occurring shortly after the first pregnancy was
apparent.” One woman described this reaction from her partner:

“The
first violence occurred when I told him I was pregnant. He was drinking
his morning coffee. He threw the coffee cup on the floor, grabbed my
arms, pinned me against the wall and punched me in the stomach. He never
said anything.”22

According
to one report: “One in 12 pregnant women experiences battering during
pregnancy.” The report also states that “Battered women are four
times more likely to deliver a low birthweight infant.”23
Since birthweight is the most critical factor in determining a child’s
survival and later health and development, these facts have a tremendous
impact on future generations as well as on the women being battered.

Most
sources agree that battering during pregnancy is probably greatly
underreported, and more research needs to be done. An article in the Injury
Prevention Network Newsletter reported that “as many as
one-quarter to two thirds of battered women studied reported abuse
during pregnancy.”24

“Since
25 to 35% of battered women are pregnant, battering results in increased
neonatal care, increased likelihood of miscarriage, and increased risk
of mental retardation and physical disability in children. Violent
families use hospitals and doctors more than other families. Bellevue,
Washington, for example, estimates that each domestic violence incident
costs the city over $3,000.”25

MYTHS
AND FACTS ABOUT DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

MYTH:

Domestic
violence affects only a small percentage of the population.

REALITY:

According
to a national survey conducted by Dr. Richard Gelles, violence occurs in
28% of all marriages. Dr. Gelles observes that this figure probably
underestimates the problem.
In a survey conducted by the United Methodist Church, for example, 1 in
13 church members responding had been physically abused by a spouse, and
1 in 4 had been verbally or emotionally abused. An estimated 90%
of all domestic violence incidents go unreported.

MYTH:

Middle
class women and men do not experience domestic violence as frequently as
poor women and men.

REALITY:

Abusers
and victims come from every race, religion and socioeconomic background.
Women have reported attacks by husbands who are doctors, judges,
lawyers, legislators, police officers, teachers, social workers, clergy,
factory workers, and laborers. Poor women are often
over-represented in shelters for battered women because they have few
resources. Wealthier women may have access to credit cards, bank
accounts, and cash, and can purchase services. They may have more to
lose in terms of status and economics if they report their abusers to
police.

MYTH:

Alcohol
abuse causes violence.

REALITY:

Alcohol
is not the cause, but it is often a contributor. Studies
reveal that 40-80% of the time alcohol is a factor in incidents of
domestic violence. Drinking lowers one’s control or inhibitions and
may be the excuse for letting down these restraints against violence.

MYTH:

Abusers
are psychopathic. Only sick, evil people abuse their partners.

REALITY:

Abusers
may lead “normal” lives in all aspects except their inability to
control aggressive impulses. While no one would dispute the evil of a
vicious assault on another person, men who beat their wives or intimate
partners are not always psychologically unbalanced. Studies have found
that the male spouse abuser has a poor self-image, feels he is less than
he ought to be, and feels he does not live up to society’s ideal of
masculinity. A man takes out his feelings of inadequacy and frustration
on his partner because he feels that other men would respond to his
aggression in kind and she mostly likely will not. Abusers do show
a tendency to use charm as a manipulative technique, and are usually
described by their women as being very, very good or very, very horrid.
Unlike the psychopath, however, the abuser does feel a sense of guilt
and shame at his uncontrollable actions and this may contribute to his
denial of the dire consequences of his actions.

MYTH:

Women who
are domestic violence victims are masochistic, provoke the assaults, and
enjoy the violence.

REALITY:

According
to Murray Strauss in Sexual Inequality, Cultural Norms, and Wife
Beating (1976), husbands provoke the violence eighty-five percent of
the time. Women report being brutally assaulted for such things as: the
baby was crying; the dishes weren’t done yet; the man wanted a dinner
other than that which had been prepared; his or her wanting to have sex;
his or her not wanting to have sex. The idea that anyone would
enjoy violence — being punched in the face, kicked in the abdomen,
thrown against a wall, having bones broken, eyes swollen shut and lips
split open — is ludicrous.

MYTH:

Some
women need or deserve a beating to keep them in line.

REALITY:

Historically,
laws have stated that men not only had the right but were obligated to
keep their “children, cattle, and wives from transgressing.” Laws to
this effect were made by both secular and religious bodies. Laws have
changed, but attitudes prevail. Women are not the property of men. No
one has the right to control another’s behavior by violent and brutal
assaults. Studies have suggested that a victim’s behavior may
have little correlation to an abuser’s violence. When the abuser is
under stress, he will find reasons to assault the victim.

MYTH:

A strong
faith will prevent battering.

REALITY:

The
prevention of battering relies on the development and understanding of
what it means to care for and love another. Religion, its scriptures and
its community, has been used to accept or condone violence in
relationships. These same resources can also provide restraints against
violence and define healthy, safe relationships. It takes more than
faith to prevent battering.

MYTH:

Shelters
for victims of violence break up families.

REALITY:

“To
suggest that shelters break up abusive families is like saying that
hospitals cause auto accidents” (Working Together). Violence
breaks up families. Women who have been abused must make their own
decisions regarding their future and their children’s future. This is
the philosophy of empowerment held by most shelter programs. Being a
victim of domestic violence is a difficult experience and the decision
to leave is not a simple one. About 75% of women who go to shelters
return to abusive relationships and nearly that number will return to
the shelter after another violent episode. 26

Taken
from Domestic Violence Guide for Clergy

WHY
WOMEN DON’T LEAVE
or “Why Doesn’t She Just Leave??”

Both on
an individual and a societal level we have created many excuses not to
intervene in the problem of domestic violence, such as, “it’s a
private issue,” “it’s too complicated,” and “women won’t
prosecute anyway.” Perhaps the most irresponsible of all these excuses
comes in the form of a question which blames the victim: “Why
doesn’t she just leave?”

There are
many reasons that women don’t leave violent and abusive situations, a
primary one being that it is often more dangerous to leave than to stay.
The fact is that women are at greatest risk while trying to leave and
after they have left an abusive relationship.

The
following statistics reveal some of the reasons women don’t “just
leave”:

Although
divorced and separated women compose only 7% of the population in the
United States, they account for 75% of all battered women and report
being battered 14 times as often as women still living with their
partners.

Women
who leave their batterers are at a 75% greater risk of being killed by
the batterer than those who stay.

After
being sheltered, 31% of abused women in New York City returned to their
batterers primarily because they could not locate longer-term housing.

Abusers
keep or destroy documentation like birth certificates and immunization
records, thus preventing or seriously delaying the family’s receiving
welfare benefits or housing assistance.27Women
are often forced to remain in dangerous and degrading situations because
they must first be concerned with basic survival for themselves and
their children.

WHAT
CAN I DO
TO HELP A BATTERED WOMAN?

1. Reassure
her that she does not cause the beatings. A wife beater learned to use
violence as a way of expressing anger or frustration long before he met
her.

2. Physical
safety is the first priority. Beatings usually get worse as time goes
on. Ignoring a beating is dangerous. Explain this to your friend.

3. Tell her
that she is not alone in her predicament. Wife assault happens to many
women, in all income and education levels, in all social classes, in all
religious and ethnic groups.

4. Explain
to her that wife beating is not a sickness, it’s a crime. It is too
widespread and occurs too frequently to be caused by mental illness.

5. Your
friend needs your moral support; she needs your reassurance that she is
not to blame. Help her to find the assistance she needs to live a life
free from assault.

6. If
she is not ready at this point to make major changes in her life, do not
take away your friendship. Your support and advice may be what will make
it possible for her to act at a later date.28

IS
ANYTHING WORKING?

Model
Court Intervention Programs

The fact
is that when women are believed, supported, protected and given options,
they very often leave a domestic situation in which they are being
battered, and often press charges against their persecutors. Creating
the circumstances which allow women to get out of violent situations
requires political will and a concerted cooperative approach on the part
of various institutions such as the police, courts and social service
agencies.

There are
several model court programs around the country which are making
significant progress in confronting domestic violence. These programs
have not eliminated this type of violence against women, but they have
shown that when a community is committed to addressing the problem, the
severity and frequency of violence can be reduced. Each program is
unique, but they share common features such as interagency cooperation,
and a commitment to protect and support victims and to prosecute and
treat batterers.

Hofeller,
Kathleen. Battered Women, Shattered Lives. Sarotaga, CA: R&E
Publishers, 1987. Stories of three different women who endure
the fear, pain and despair of being battered and brutalized by the very
men who professed to love them.

Jones,
Ann and Schechter, Susan. When Love Goes Wrong: What to
Do When You Can’t Do Anything Right. New York: Harper
Collins, 1992. A must for women locked in unhappy relationships
and professionals who wish to help them.

“Once
Were Warriors”A movie filmed and produced in New Zealand which shows the
complexity of violence in a love relationship. It was described by the
Family Violence Prevention Fund as “quite possibly the best depiction
of domestic violence ever captured on film.”

“Crimes
Against the Future”
March of Dimes video — the only current video specific to abuse during
pregnancy.

Hollywood
has also produced feature length films about the issue of domestic
violence, among them:

“The
boys never meant any harm against the girls. They just wanted to
rape.”

School
administrator in Kenya after angry school
boys went on a rampage killing 19 school girls and raping 71 30

Rape
Poem

There
is no difference between being raped
and being pushed down a flight of cement stairs
except that the wounds also bleed inside.

There is no difference between being raped
and being run over by a truck
except that afterward men asked if you enjoyed it.

There is no difference between being raped
and being bit on the ankle by a rattlesnake
except that people ask if your skirt was short
and why you were out alone anyhow.

There is no difference between being raped
and going head first through a windshield
except that afterward you are afraid
not of cars
but of half the human race.31

Marge
Piercy

RAPE

Rape is
one of the most prevalent and brutal violent acts committed against
women all over the world, and yet it is so veiled in myth and
misconception that it is frequently diminished or even dismissed in the
mind of the public. Myths and ingrained cultural attitudes are the
biggest barriers to societies recognizing the scope and extent of the
problem and taking serious measures to prevent it.

There
is really no place on Earth where women are safe from the possibility of
rape. Women are raped by strangers in dark alleys and by their husbands
in their own bedrooms. Many women experience rape and abuse while in
confinement by police and military. Women are raped in time of war as an
act of political revenge, threat or intimidation. They are also raped by
their fathers, brothers and other male relatives, and by neighbors and
acquaintances.

According
to researcher Lori Heise, “Six well designed studies suggest that
between one in five and one in seven U.S. women will be the victim of a
completed rape in her lifetime.” Studies in Canada, the U.K. and New
Zealand reveal very similar rates in all of these countries.32
Many countries do not collect or report such information, and in
virtually every country rape is under-reported. But it is a major
problem the world over.

A
conference report by the Global Fund for Women included the following
statistics:

One
out of every two women arrested by the military in the Philippines is
forced to undress. Among those arrested, 14% were slapped, boxed, or
severely mauled. Another 14% were harassed and threatened with rape or
death.

In
Jamaica, where rape is not a criminal offense, 1,088 cases of rape and
carnal abuse were reported in 1989.

In
Bolivia 79% of young prostitutes turn to prostitution out of economic
need after running away from violent homes where they were victims of
rape and incest by male relatives.

While
only 1 in 20 rapes per year is reported in South Africa, statistics
indicate that a woman is raped every 90 seconds, totalling approximately
320,000 women raped each year.33

MYTHS
AND FACTS ABOUT RAPE

Because
rape is so shrouded in myth and distortion, to stop this form of sexual
violence we much first work to get accurate information and make that
information widely available throughout our communities. Misinformation
and myths endanger us all because they help perpetrate perceptions and
circumstances that allow rape to continue.

These
are some common myths about rape and sexual assault:

MYTH:

Rape is
caused by the victim. If a woman flirts or wears sexy clothing, she is
“asking for it.”

REALITY:

Rape
is a violation of body, mind, and spirit. It takes away a person’s
control over her or his own body and choices. No one “asks for”or
enjoys a violent physical attack which can result in injury, disease,
pregnancy, or death. Rape is not an act of sexual passion; it is a
violent crime in which sex is used as a weapon.

MYTH:

Only
certain kinds of people get raped or sexually assaulted. It can’t
happen to me.

REALITY:

Rapists
act without considering their victims’ physical appearance, dress,
age, race or social status. Rape victims have ranged in age from 1 to 92
years.

MYTH:

Rape is
an impulsive, uncontrollable act of sexual gratification. Most rapes are
spontaneous (for example, a sexually frustrated man sees an attractive
woman and just cannot control himself).

REALITY:

Rape is a
premeditated act of violence, not a spontaneous act of passion. Seventy-one
percent of rapes are planned in advance. Sixty percent of
convicted rapists were married or had regular sex partners at the time
of the assault. Men can control their sexual impulses. Rapists are
motivated by power, anger, and control, not sexual gratification.

MYTH:

No woman
can be raped against her will. Any woman could prevent rape if she
really wanted to.

REALITY:

Many
rapes involve the use of weapons. An even higher percent involve the use
of force or the threat of force. Women are often physically weaker than
men and are not taught to defend themselves or to be physically
aggressive. In fact some women are not willing to hurt someone else,
especially someone they know.

MYTH:

Most
rapes occur when people are out alone at night. If people stay at home,
they will be safe.

REALITY:

The
victim’s home is where most sexual assaults take place. Also, many
people are abducted, attacked and/or raped in broad daylight and in
public places.

MYTH:

Rapists
are strangers. If people avoid strangers, they will not be raped.

REALITY:

In
a large percentage of rapes the assailant is known to the victim, and is
often a family member. Official statistics only reflect reported rapes,
not the actual number of acquaintance rapes since these are often not
reported.

MYTH:

Rapists
are abnormal perverts; only “sick” or “insane” men are rapists.

REALITY:

In a
study of 1300 convicted offenders, few were diagnosed as mentally or
emotionally ill. Most were “well-adjusted,” but had a greater
tendency to express their anger through violence and rage.

MYTH:

Women
frequently “cry rape;” false reporting of rape is common.

REALITY:

Only
2% of rape calls are false reports. This is the same false report rate
as for other felonies.34

Rape
in the United States

The
U.S. has an alarming rate of rape, much higher than most other developed
countries. “The United States has a rape rate thirteen times higher
than Britain’s, nearly four times higher than Germany’s and more
than twenty times higher than Japan’s.”35

For many
reasons, some of which have already been addressed, violent acts against
women are often under-reported. Rape, in particular, is generally
assumed by most sources to be greatly under-reported. The
statistics used in this guide come from a wide range of sources based on
data from the past decade and primarily from the past five years. While
these statistics indicate that forcible rape has declined in the U.S. in
recent years, the frequency and scope of rape is still appalling. These
are some statistics that characterize rape in the U.S.:

According
to the FBI, one woman is raped in the U.S. every five minutes. 97,464
forcible rapes were reported to law enforcement agencies across the
nation during 1995. The FBI estimates that 72 of every 100,000
women in the U.S. were victims of forcible rape in 1995 (this was 6%
less than in 1994 and 13% less than FBI statistics showed in 1991.36a

According
to a report compiled in 1992 using data from prior years, one out of
every 8, or at least 12.1 million American women, has been the victim of
forcible rape.

More
than 6 out of 10 rape cases (61%) occurred before victims reached
the age of 18. 29% of all forcible rapes occurred when the victim
was less than 11 years old, while another 32% occurred between the ages
of 11 and 17.36b

Date
Rape/Campus Rape

An
appalling number of rapes take place on college campuses, though a very
small percentage are reported and even fewer are ever prosecuted. Many
women coeds are raped by male students — often men they know or at
least have agreed to date. Because the men are acquaintances or because
they have willingly gone on a date, these young women often do not
identify their experience as rape. Moreover, women often blame
themselves for making bad choices or for not being strong enough or
smart enough to prevent the assault, especially when drugs or alcohol
were involved. The fact is that campus rapes are often pre-meditated,
and many are carefully planned gang-rapes. According to an article in Ms.
magazine, “Fraternities in particular seem to be breeding grounds for
campus sexual aggression, from jeering verbal abuse to acquaintance
rape.”37

Almost
as disturbing as the frequency and nature of these assaults is the
response of campus authorities— who often ignore or minimize the
incident. The actions of many campus administrators across the country
have made it clear that they are more concerned with preserving the
image of the institution and the support of funders than in protecting
women from rape or in prosecuting men who rape. Attorney Jeffrey Newman,
an expert on campus sexual assault, calls it a “syndrome.”38
Very often when women are raped on a college campus they are pressured
by the administration to handle the matter quietly within the university
system. And the penalties imposed on student rapists are a reflection of
how insignificant school administrators consider the crime: “On many
campuses, the penalty for rape is identical to, or less severe than, the
sanctions for plagiarism — one year’s suspension. Frequently,
confessed rapists aren’t even removed from campus. They are placed on
probation.”39a

On
the other hand, the victims’ lives are greatly impacted. They “drop
out of classes they share with their assailants. Their grades go down.
They experience chronic depression and have trouble concentrating. Many
women leave school for a period of time or drop out altogether.”39b

The clear
message to young men is that it is their prerogative to rape and
disregard the humanity of women, and that the system will protect them.
Consequently, they continue raping and assaulting women.

The
same issue of Ms. carried the following statistics:

25% of
college women in one survey experienced rape or attempted rape. Of these
84% knew their attackers. But only 5% notified the police.

15% of
the college men in another study admitted they had forced a woman to
have sex; 51% of college men in a third survey said they would rape if
they were certain they could get away with it.

20% of
all rapes by a single offender are committed by men under the age of
twenty-one; in 62% of assaults involving multiple offenders, the rapists
are under twenty-one.40

Rape
As A Crime Of War

Women are
particularly vulnerable to rape and abuse in times of war. Today, there
are wars being fought all over the world for ethnic, religious,
economic, and political reasons. As a result of so much violent
conflict, there are between eighteen and twenty million refugees fleeing
the violence and devastation in their homelands. The vast majority of
these refugees are women, who are subjected to abuse at every step of
their flight—from men in their own countries, from border police and
officials in countries they try to enter, and even from men within or
responsible for refugee camps.

Women are
also targeted by men on either side of a conflict who rape, kidnap,
kill, and torture the “enemy’s” women as an act of war. Women
activists and insurgents in every part of the world who are captured and
held as political prisoners are also sexually abused and tortured. This
was the experience of thousands of women who were part of the struggle
to oust military dictatorships from many of the countries in Central and
South America during the 1970s and 80s.

There
are countless stories of the sexual atrocities in Hitler’s
concentration camps during World War II. But only in recent years have
the horrors committed by the Japanese army come to public light. From
1932 to 1945 approximately 200,000 women (mostly young girls under
twenty years of age) were abducted and forced into sexual slavery for
the Japanese army. The vast majority (eighty to ninety percent) of these
women were from Korea, “but women were also taken from China, Taiwan,
the Philippines, Indonesia and even European countries.”41a

War
prostitution has always existed, but in this case “the government
itself systematically planned, ordered, established, and controlled the
[Japanese] army brothels where conditions were brutal. The comfort
women, as they were called, had to entertain thirty to forty
soldiers a day, and generally more on weekends. Many of them were
infected by venereal diseases and were treated with large doses of
harmful drugs.” As a result of this abuse, it is estimated that only
about ten percent survived. Many were killed or forced to commit suicide
when the Japanese lost the war. Most of those who did survive were
destroyed for life. “After returning home, these former comfort women
could not marry, or failed in marriage because of their own sense of
guilt, ill health, or the bias they suffered in society. They currently
live alone under severe economic difficulties and many are in failing
health.”41b
The Japanese government has only recently been forced to
acknowledge the plight of these women and is being pressured to make
reparations.

An
especially brutal and devastating form of rape is mass gang rape as an
act of war. “In recent years mass rape in war has been documented in
Bosnia, Cambodia, Liberia, Peru, Somalia, and Uganda. A European
Community fact-finding team estimates that more than 20,000 Muslim women
were raped during the war in Bosnia in the early 1990s. Many have been
held in ‘rape camps’ where they have been raped repeatedly and
forced to bear Serbian children against their will.”42

Health
Consequences of Rape

Rape has
many physical and emotional consequences for victims, the most extreme
being death. Many rape victims are tortured, killed, and mutilated.
Other obvious consequences of violent assault are broken bones, cuts,
bruises, and abrasions. Not all rape involves violent assault and not
all resulting health problems are obvious or even immediate.

The
specific manifestations and the severity of future problems depend on
many variables, such as, the circumstances, severity and duration of the
assault, the identity of the attacker, the way a woman views her role in
the incident, and the kind of treatment and support she receives
afterwards.

Often,
the initial reaction to rape is one of denial and emotional numbness
followed later by recurring feelings of terror and helplessness. For a
variety of reasons women do not report being raped: they don’t know
where to go, who to trust, how to get help; they are ashamed, or fear
retaliation or social stigma, or that the perpetrator still has power
over them. All rape victims are subject to a psychological delayed
trauma reaction called Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. Women who receive
no help immediately following rape often experience many future problems
which do not even seem related to the initial incident.

“For
successful recovery, a victim needs to work through the realization of
what happened, to know that it was not her fault, and to feel that her
own worth hasn’t changed as a consequence. Seeking help at this point
is a sign of strength, not weakness, and a way for a woman to increase
her power. Also, the rape victim is usually not the only person affected
by the crime; family, husband or lover, and others close to her may need
to be involved, both to speed the victim’s process of recovery and to
work through issues of their own.”43

The rape
crisis movement has identified the physical and emotional trauma victims
suffer during, immediately after, and in the long term after a rape, as
Rape Trauma Syndrome.

Dreams and
nightmares, either of the actual assault or related violent dreams

Phobias, usually
specific to the circumstances of the rape, including fear of crowds,
of being alone, or of characteristics of the assailant

Paranoia, or fear
of everyone

Social
Lifestyle

Inability to resume
more than a minimum level of social functioning (e.g. only going to
work or school)

Staying home, or
only able to go outside with someone else

Seeking more
support from family, with or without disclosing the assault

Moving

Changing telephone
number or getting an unlisted number

Sexual
Lifestyle

Fear
of sex. Victims for whom the assault was their only sexual
experience may be afraid that sex will be like the assault. Sexually
active victims may fear having sex with their partners. Other
victims may fear starting new relationships.

Fear of physical
contact, such as hugging

Lack of desire

Rape can
make other problems worse for a victim. For instance if a woman was
already having physical, financial or psychological problems, the
immediate trauma as well as the disruption of her life after the rape
usually increases or complicates existing problems.

Because
the problem is so extensive and cuts across so many boundaries, there
really is no “type” of woman most likely to be raped. The one common
thread from recent research is that “women who are raped are more
likely than average to have been sexually abused as children.” It
is not known why this is so and clearly this is not a factor in all
rapes.45

WHAT
NOT TO SAY TO VICTIMS
OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE

Sadly,
given the prevalence of sexual violence in today’s world, many may
find themselves unexpectedly in the position of wanting to comfort or
console someone who has been assaulted. While there are no easy
responses, the following kinds of statements and questions must be
avoided when dealing with victims of sexual assault.

“While
women represent one half of the global population and one third of the
labor force and are responsible for two thirds of all working hours they
receive one tenth of world income and own less than one percent of world
property.”47

On first
glance one might wonder what relationship legal systems and economic
structures have with the issue of violence against women, but laws and
social customs reflect attitudes and beliefs. There is a direct
connection between women’s legal and economic status and the amount of
violence and hardship they suffer. Men abuse, batter and violate women,
in part simply because they can. Men have the physical and economic
power, and the legal and political protection which allows them to abuse
women. Violence against women serves both to wield that power and to
preserve it. Gail Omvadt gives the following description of women’s
status in India:

“On
the one hand, the pervasive violence against women throughout society
has an obvious economic function: in keeping women under control, in
preventing them from going out of the home to take advantage of economic
opportunities, it forces them into the most low-paid or unpaid forms of
labor. Brutal suppression in fact keeps women in their propertyless and
resourceless state....On the other hand, the basic economic dependence
of women, their propertylessness and resourcelessness, renders them
fearfully weak in standing up and challenging the violence and power
that is used against them in society. Thus it appears that violence
keeps women economically dependent and super-exploited, while economic
dependence and exploitation render them unable to combat violence.”48

Though
specifically referring to India, this is an apt portrayal of women’s
status in many countries. Negative attitudes about women are so deeply
ingrained in many Asian cultures that baby girls are killed and female
fetuses are aborted. When they do survive, girl children are often given
less food, health care, education, and certainly less love and
attention. “A World Health Organization study reveals wherever food is
in short supply, girl children are fed less, breast fed for a shorter
time, and taken to doctors less often.” Many girls “are permanently
maimed, both physically and mentally from chronic malnutrition.”49

The
following statistics demonstrate this reality:

Before
birth, amniocentesis is used for sex selection leading to the abortion
of female fetuses at rates as high as 99% in Bombay, India.50

Discrimination
against girl children is so strong in the Punjab state of India that
girl children aged 2-4 die at twice the rate of boys. Among 45
developing countries for which recent data are available, there are only
two where mortality rates for girls ages 1-4 are not higher than that of
boys.51

Based
on global mortality patterns, some one hundred million Asian women are
estimated to be missing, attributable largely to female infanticide and
the abortion of female fetuses.52

One
sixth of all female infant deaths in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh were
due to neglect and discrimination (WHO 1986 figures).

In
a South Asian country, one study over a two and a half year period found
that 58% of known female infanticide was committed by feeding babies the
poisonous sap of a plant or by choking them by lodging rice hulls soaked
in milk in their throats.53

In
India in 1990, police officially recorded 4,835 dowry deaths in all
India, but the Ahmedabad Women’s Action Group estimated that some
1,000 women may have been burned alive annually in Gujurat State alone.54

In
the urban centers of Maharashtra State, 19% of all deaths among women 15
to 44 years old are due to “accidental burns.” By contrast, the same
figure is less than 1% in Guatemala, Ecuador and Chile.55

Dowry
Deaths

One
of the most demeaning forms of abuse of women is the custom of dowry, a
practice in which the woman’s family pays the groom’s family to take
her as a bride. Besides reducing women to an object to be disposed of,
the custom often causes great hardship and poverty to the woman’s
family. Though women’s groups have organized to oppose the custom, it
is very hard to eradicate because of the power and opposition of those
who make great financial gain from the practice. The instutitionalized
custom of dowry was actually outlawed in India in 1961, and dowry
harassment (the groom’s family threatening and abusing the bride until
her family provides more dowry) has been considered a “punishable
offense since the mid-eighties.”56
The problem is that the laws against dowry harassment are not enforced,
so rather than disappearing, the practice is actually increasing for a
variety of reasons, including increased commercialism and materialism in
Indian society.

In
recent years the financial demands have grown to such an extent that
many women are killed by their in-laws who want a larger dowry. This
cruel practice has given rise to the phenomenon known as dowry deaths.

“The
practice of dowry has often led to a form of extortion where the husband
and his family beat or torture a bride to extract increasing amounts of
money from her family. In many instances the bride is actually killed.
Usually, her death is in the form of a “kitchen accident” in which
she is pushed into an open fire-stove after being doused with kerosene.
The man is then free to remarry, in a different city or village, and
accumulate more dowry.”57

Discrimination
in Education

One
area of discrimination against women that seriously impacts all of
society is education. Two-thirds of the world’s illiterates are women,
and while the general global illiteracy rate is falling, the female
illiteracy rate is rising.58
While this is slowly changing — the growing awareness of the need for
universal education is becoming more ingrained — women are being
taught to read at a much slower rate than men. In many countries where
the economic crisis has caused price increases for school fees and
books, parents must choose which children can go to school. Invariably,
it is the girls who are left behind to help with household chores and
younger siblings. Many cultures believe that education is wasted on
girls anyway. This belief is counter to evidence which demonstrates that
educating women is good for society based on improved family health and
other indicators.

“The
1990 Human Development Report underlines the high social dividend that
comes with female literacy, as demonstrated by lower infant mortality
rates, better family nutrition, reduced fertility and lower population
growth.”59

In
other societies, it is not just poverty but violence and the threat of
violence that prevents women from getting an education. One of the most
horrendous examples of violence against female students comes from
Canada, which is a very prosperous and in many ways progressive country.
On December 6, 1989 engineering students at the University of Montreal
were brutally reminded that no country is safe for women. A 25 year old
man, described as a “combat-video aficionado” had failed in his
attempt to complete an application to the engineering school and blamed
the female students for his failure. The man, Marc Lépine, stormed into
a classroom where he separated the men from the women and ordered the
men to leave the room. He then opened fire on the women shouting “you’re
all fucking feminists.” In his rage he went on a killing spree
which left 14 women dead and nine other women and four men wounded. He
then killed himself. He left a suicide note which blamed women for all
of his failures.60

Brutal
Laws and Legal Murder

Clearly,
Marc Lépine’s rampage was the personal vendetta of a deeply troubled
individual, not a result of university policy or a country’s laws.
This incident would never happen in many countries simply because
national laws, customs, and social mores limit or prohibit women’s
participation in the social institutions and public life of that
country. For instance, in many Muslim countries women are
required to have a male guardian for their entire lives. Thus, women are
subject to abuse and control not just by husbands but by other male
relatives as well. This practice is often both socially acceptable and
legally condoned. Under a code of “Honor,” women have been
beaten, maimed and murdered for offending “Family Honor” in
countries as diverse as Brazil, Pakistan, and Egypt. Nahid Toubia speaks
of this tradition in Africa and the Middle East.

“Taken
to its extreme, women may be murdered as punishment for suspected
extramarital affairs. In Southern Egypt, for example, one still finds
the killing of “sexually deviant” daughters or sisters as a matter
of honor for the men in the family. One man is assigned the task, but
the whole family confers on the matter and sanctions the murder. The
legal system has become increasingly critical of this behavior, but
still to this day “honor homicides” are given more lenient sentences
than other types of premeditated murder.”61

In
Jordan, men rarely spend more than six months to two years in jail for a
“Crime of Honor” which is killing a female relative for alleged
sexual misconduct. Women cannot exercise the Honor defense even if they
kill a man for the same crime. The minimum sentence for murder (of a
man) is 15 years.62

In
recent years, with fundamentalism on the rise around the world, many
countries have passed even more regressive laws. Pakistan now has one of
the most repressive anti-woman penal codes in the world. Women within
Pakistan are greatly opposed to several laws which are now being
strictly enforced. Three laws which particularly discriminate against
Pakistani women are the Law of Evidence, the Offense of Zina
(Enforcement of Hudood) Ordinance of 1979 and a Citizenship Act.
As with laws in many countries, these laws “were introduced in the
name of Islam, but were clearly used by the military rulers to get
support from religious lobbyists.”63
Women in other Muslim countries fear that similar laws will be
adopted by their governments as fundamentalist backlash sweeps through
the Islamic world.

The
Law of Evidence states that women’s testimony or evidence is worth one
half the evidence of a man. The Hudood (Islamic punishment) Ordinance is
being used against rape victims. Under the new Hudood Laws:

the burden of proof
in a rape case falls on the woman, who must convince the court that
she was raped;

rape can only be
proven by the testimony of four male Moslem witnesses;

the police, who
tend to favor men, are often reluctant to file rape charges; rape
victims often end up being raped again while in police custody;

apart from the
psychological damage the victim suffers, she may also end up being
ostracized and turned out by her family, which is reluctant to be
associated with her once the rape is publicized;

more
often than not, under the new laws the rape victim is charged with
adultery which is now a crime against the state.64

The
following case demonstrates some of the extremes within this system:

A
13-year-old girl who was raped and then became pregnant was sentenced to
three years in prison and one hundred lashes while the man who raped her
was set free.65
Pakistani law allows for women convicted of extramarital sex to be given
25 year prison sentences or even to be stoned to death.

ZINA,
another law, is defined as the offense of “desiring and fornicating
with other men’s women,”66a
yet when these laws are enforced rarely if ever is the man’s role
considered. Variations of the Pakistani zina laws have been passed in
many other countries such as Iran, Iraq, and Algeria. As a result the
female prison population has increased as much as 200 percent in some
countries which has also resulted in a great increase in custodial
violence and rape. Other elements of Islam which have state approval in
many Moslem countries and which serve to oppress and abuse women are polygamy
and repudiation. In many Muslim countries men can take
up to four wives without even considering the needs or feelings of any
of the women involved. According to Fatima Marnissi, “polygamy is a
way for the man to humiliate the woman as a sexual being....Women are
considered just sexual agents to satisfy the sexual needs of men.”66b

“Repudiation
is the Muslim phenomenon of verbal repudiation whose characteristic is
the unconditional right of the male to break the marriage bond without
any justification and without having his decisions reviewed by a court
or a judge.”67

Essentially,
many Muslim societies consider women less than human. Or as Marnissi
states:

“The
Muslim order thus considers humanity to be constituted by males only,
and women were considered as a threatening outside element.”68

There are
many country variations in terms of interpretation and enforcement of
Islamic laws. As with all religions, there is much dispute about
interpretation. Progressive Islamic scholars disagree with the
fundamentalist anti-woman interpretation of Islamic scriptures. Basically,
the intent of many of these laws is to keep men and women segregated,
and to keep women isolated, subservient to male guardians, and confined
to the home. In Saudi Arabia women are not allowed to drive. In Iran
women can be punished for “un-Islamic” behavior such as laughing or
allowing a piece of hair to show outside their veil. In Kuwait women
have access to advanced education and economic prosperity, but they are
not allowed to vote.

The
global economic crisis of the 1980s, and the subsequent neoliberal
economic policies instituted in many countries, resulted in various
circumstances which are exploitative of women and damaging to their
health and well being. Seeking to unload the heavy surplus of
petrodollars resulting from the high price of oil during the ‘70s,
international banks encouraged heavy borrowing on the part of countries
in the southern hemisphere, often at the insistence of governments in
the northern hemisphere.

When
rising interest rates and falling commodity prices resulted in
conditions under which many countries could not make their loan
payments, i.e. “the debt crisis,” frantic banks turned to the
international lending institutions to bail them out. Structural
Adjustment Policies (SAPs) are the measures designed by the IMF and the
World Bank to insure that the developing countries continue to make
payments on their loans.

SAPs
place the burden of the debt crisis onto those who can least afford to
pay — poor developing countries. Within these nations, the poorest
people are disproportionately affected, and since women constitute the
majority of the poor, women bear the brunt of the burden of the SAPs.
The concept of structural adjustment is based on the premise that the
free enterprise system will solve all economic woes. The objective is to
get governments to “spend less and earn more.” In simplistic terms
the theory behind SAPs is that they will limit imports and increase
exports, thus stimulating economic recovery and growth.

What
these policies effectively mean for poor people is that they work longer
for less money and pay more for goods and services. In all countries
women bear the brunt of these austerity measures as they struggle to
feed, clothe, house, and maintain the health of their families,
often with no social assistance. Structural adjustment has produced
tremendous hardship and misery in many countries, with women and
children the greatest victims.

Export
Processing Zones or Free Trade Zones

Debtor
countries have experienced a proliferation of export processing zones or
free trade zones with the introduction of structural adjustment
policies. In many countries, rapid industrialization has displaced women
from traditional economic activities and subsistence agriculture, into
low wage manufacturing jobs. This was the case in the newly
industrialized countries of Asia (the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand,
and Taiwan), where “the number of women in industry grew by 104% from
1960-1980.” Also, in countries like Mexico, Brazil, India, and
Nigeria, which all experienced rapid growth, “women were absorbed into
certain industries (garment, textile, and electronics-based) on the
assumption that they make a more docile and disciplined work force.”70
Most of these jobs are located in the export processing zones (EPZs) and
are controlled by foreign owned multinational corporations, that
constantly wield the threat of taking the jobs elsewhere to keep the
workers intimidated and compliant.

The
following description of conditions in these export factories comes from
women activists in the Caribbean where there has been a rapid influx of
these EPZs:

“Women
are paid by piece work. They often have no access to basic facilities
like lunchrooms. When they need the toilet, they are frisked or checked
and on top of that, they are monitored and allowed to go only once a
day....The conditions under which these women work are reminiscent of
earlier forms of colonialism like slavery and indentureship.”

“The
foreign factory owners rely on our local governments to keep the
workers’ unions from being effective. As a result the conditions in
some of the factories are horrible. There are hazardous chemicals and
little ventilation, and safety regulations aren’t enforced.”71

Wages
and working conditions are even worse in other regions. “As low as
wages for women in Caribbean factories are they are two to three times
higher than those of the export factory workers in the low-wage Asian
countries of Thailand, Sri Lanka and the Philippines.”72

Entire
societies degrade because of the exploitative conditions under which
these women work. Often the factories are located far from the urban
centers where workers live. So in addition to working long hours with
arbitrary demands for overtime, women must spend hours commuting, which
means they have less time for their other duties such as caring for
children, the sick and elderly, preparing food, and generally
maintaining social networks and traditions. Many of the workers are
single heads of households, though factory owners prefer young women
with no children. In some countries (Mexico) workers have been forced to
take regular pregnancy tests and are fired if they become pregnant.

Kathy
McAfee, who has written extensively on this issue, states: “Employers
choose young women because they can get away with paying them less,
hiring and firing them as suits their convenience, forcing them to work
longer hours and otherwise denying them basic labor and human rights.
The social costs are grave....In some countries such as Malaysia,
hard-pressed peasant farmers sacrifice their daughters to the export
industries where, in exchange for a few years of cash income, the young
women frequently lose their health and their respectability.”73

Though
specific conditions vary from country to country, these descriptions are
typical of working conditions in EPZs all over the world where women are
being exploited for the profit of foreign corporations.

Sex
Trade and Exploitation

Economic
crisis, discrimination and exploitation are also the reasons for, and
results of, women’s participation in prostitution and other aspects of
the sex industry. Almost always, when women sell themselves sexually it
is a matter of economic survival. In many cases women have virtually
been sold into slavery by someone else, usually male family members.
If these women attempt to leave the brothels or bars they risk
severe beating or even death if they are caught. This is the case with
thousands of women from Burma and other countries of Southeast Asia who
are forced or sold into brothels in Thailand. Thousands of other women
from Thailand are forced into similar situations in Japan. Nepalese
women are sent to India, and increasingly women from the newly
independent states and Eastern European countries are being forced into
prostitution. Anywhere there are military bases, women are forced
into the sex trade either because their families sell them to brothel
owners, because they are kidnapped and forced to work against their
will, or because they are lured by promises of jobs. Around the world,
the number of women forced into this life of desperation and degradation
is in the hundreds of thousands.

Prostitution

Generally,
when governments address the issue of prostitution, it is only in the
legal punitive sense. In most countries where prostitution is illegal
only the woman is considered at fault. “There are more arrests for
prostitution in the U.S. than for any other crime....In fact 30 percent
of all female inmates are in jail for prostitution.”74
Why aren’t the men who participate in the “crime” charged also?
Women make easy targets for the system. It is much safer, and easier, to
arrest and harass prostitutes than wife beaters, rapists, and other
criminals because the women are not as likely to fight back. This
reality also reflects the low status of women and the fact that legal
institutions all over the world are more concerned with preserving the
power and rights of men than with protecting women.

There are
many faces of the sex trade. In countries where this practice flourishes
the reality is much more brutal and deadly than the image that is
presented to the rest of the world. There are a number of euphemisms
covering up the reality behind the benign phrases. Terms like
“hospitality girls” and “rest and relaxation” tours belie the
fact that many of the “hostesses” are actually prisoners and slaves
who have been kidnapped, coerced, or sold into the sordid situations
where they are forced to sell themselves for little or no compensation.

In
many developing or third world countries tourism is a growing source of
income accounting for a large part of the foreign currency. “Most of
the money generated by sex tourism goes to tourist agencies, hotels,
club owners, tour operators, pimps and other organizers of the business.
Tourist agencies and airlines in industrialized countries reap huge
profits. Because they see it as an important source of income, some
governments condone or encourage sex tourism outright: Some officials
even exhort their women to prostitution as a form of great
patriotism! The most blatant examples are in the Philippines, South
Korea and Thailand.”75

There
are many contributing factors. Due to the heavy presence of the U.S.
military and other foreigners, prostitution has always flourished in the
Philippines. The permanent presence of U.S. military bases there has
created a permanent demand for “sex workers.” International economic
decline, which dispro- portionately impacts third world countries, has
contributed to the trade, as well as the tremendous discrepancy between
urban and rural incomes in places like Thailand. “Two or three years
working as a masseuse/prostitute enables a woman’s family to build a
house of size and quality few people in the countryside could hope to
achieve with the earnings of a lifetime.”76
The temptation is great for fathers to push their daughters into
prostitution to raise the whole family’s standard of living.

In
other cases women are simply sold or kidnapped and forced into sexual
slavery. Of the estimated 800,000 to two million prostitutes working in
Thailand, the most exploited and marginalized are the approximately
20,000 Burmese women and girls who are forcefully brought to Thailand
and brutally taken advantage of by traffickers, Thai police, and border
officials. Seeking young, clean (AIDS free) women, recruiters go into
the remote rural areas of Burma promising young women jobs as waitresses
and domestics. Estimates are that 10,000 new women a year are lured from
Burma into the brothels of Thailand only to be taken advantage of and
deported in a year of two. “Most of these women and girls interviewed
were virgins when they entered Thailand; fifty to seventy percent of
them were HIV positive when they left....They work ten to eighteen hours
a day, twenty-five days a month with anywhere from 5-15 clients a day.
Health care and birth control information are minimal.” Most of the
women return to Burma in worse condition than when they came. “Thai
authorities have routinely arrested the Burmese women and girls,
detained them, often without charge or trial, and abused them in
detention before deporting them.”77

Similar
conditions exist in India where there is great demand for young Nepali
girls in the brothels of India especially among Arab clients. This trade
in young women from Nepal is quite entrenched, with Nepali men from
certain areas and tribes willingly supplying their female relatives for
the brothels in India. “The factors conducive to smuggling out women
from Nepal are many: poverty, failing economy in mountain areas, social
imbalances due to large scale migration of young men, illiteracy and
inferior status of women.”78

So, both
directly and indirectly, economic and legal systems create the
structures and circumstances which foster violence against women. If
women had equal status and protection by law, and access to economic
resources through education, training, credit, jobs, and other avenues,
they would not be nearly so vulnerable to economic exploitation and
other forms of victimization.

LEARNING
MORE

Selected
Readings — Sexual exploitation

Kathleen
Barry. Female Sexual Slavery. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:
Prentice-Hall, 1979.Written by a Brandeis sociologist who
has made a personal mission out of studying and publicizing this
issue.“Undoubtedly a unique and important book.”

...At
last, I recognized the connection between mutilation and enslavement
that is at the root of the domination of women in the world.79

Alice
Walker

Female
genital mutilation (FGM) is one of the most insidious forms of violence
to which women are subjected. Because it is an ingrained cultural
practice in so many countries, FGM has been particularly hard to
eradicate. The practice originated and continues as a way to control
women’s lives through their sexuality. The core purpose of the
mutilation is to destroy women’s sexual desire and thus to insure
fidelity. The practice continues today because of the deep-seated belief
that uncircumcised women are unclean (or deformed and dangerous) and
therefore unmarriageable. The procedure is usually performed by
older women who gain status, respect, and material goods in exchange for
their services. Often, circumcised women become part of a secret society
or are honored by special ceremonies and celebrations at the time of
their circumcision. Advocates of the practice argue that women would
lose an important part of their cultural heritage by abandoning
circumcision.

The World
Health Organization estimates that approximately eighty million women
worldwide have been subjected to this torture, but other estimates are
as high as one hundred million. Approximately two million young girls
are mutilated each year.

Female
genital mutilation is most widely practiced in approximately 25
countries in Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. With
immigration, the practice of female genital mutilation has spread to
other countries as migrants continue traditional practices in their new
homes. As cases have been found in Europe and North America, some
countries such as France and Canada have passed laws against the
practice. The U.S. Congress just passed a resolution opposing FGM and
has introduced a bill to work to eradicate the practice. In a landmark
case, a Nigerian woman recently won political asylum in the U.S. because
she feared if she returned home with her two daughters, relatives would
kidnap the girls and perform the traditional female genital mutilation.80

The
practice is often euphemistically called female circumcision but
this term diminishes the gruesome realities of FGM. Female genital
mutilation is a general term used to describe the practice in which a
person who is often unskilled (generally traditional practitioners in a
community), and may, without the use of anesthesia, use unclean knives,
razors, or even broken glass, to cut off part or whole organs from the
vulva of a girl or woman. The practice may also involve the stitching
together of the vulva. Besides being excruciating, FGM is very dangerous
and results in many physical and mental health consequences. One
study found that 83 percent of women whose genitalia had been mutilated
required medical attention at some time in their lives for problems
related to the procedure.

When
the most extensive form of FGM (infibulation) is practiced, or when
difficulties in less severe procedures are encountered, death can result
from hemorrhage and sepsis. In many women the vagina has to be cut open
again in order to have sexual intercourse and to deliver babies. FGM can
increase the length of labor by five times, therefore increasing the
chance of damage or death to the baby.

In
addition to physical health consequences, FGM can have lifelong mental
and sexual health consequences. The initial pain of the mutiliation, the
pain with sex, and the pain of repeated incisions when required before
first sexual intercourse and childbirth, can be traumatic memories that
haunt a woman for the rest of her life, causing nightmares, anxiety, and
depression.

Women
whose normal daily life activities are disrupted by the chronic health
problems that can result from FGM can also become severely depressed and
sometimes suicidal. If the complications of FGM make a woman unable to
have sex and/or to bear children, her husband may abandon her and she
may be isolated from the rest of her community. Many women who have
undergone FGM are unable to have orgasms and others find vaginal
intercourse painful or impossible. Difficulties with a sexual
relationship may interfere with a woman’s marital relationship and her
mental health.

There
are three types of female genital mutilation which are distinguished by
the severity of the mutilation.

Type
I Sunna - The clitoral hood or prepuce is removed preserving the
clitoris itself and the posterior larger parts of the labia minora.
(This is the least severe form and resembles male circumcision.)

Type
II Excision - A severe form of genital mutilation. There are many
local variations of the technique. Usually it consists of the removal of
the clitoris (clitoridectomy) as well as parts of the clitoral hood
together with adjacent parts of the labia minora or the whole of it
without including the labia majora and without closure of the vulva.
This type of FGM is the most common in African countries except for
Somalia and the Sudan.

Type
III Infibulation (pharaonic) - Infibulation is the most severe form
of the practice and consists of excision and infibulation of the vulva.
Excision involves the removal of the entire clitoris, and the anterior
two-thirds (or more ) of the labia minora and the labia majora. The two
sides of the vulva are then stitched together, intended to heal in a
smooth, flat, hairless area. The vaginal opening is almost completely
scarred over, leaving only a small opening to allow urinary and
menstrual flow. The stitching together of the vulva after excision is
called infibulation. The stitching together is often done with catgut
sutures or the wound is glued together with an herbal paste or
egg mixture. To allow for the wound to heal the girl’s legs are tied
together and she is kept immobile for several weeks until healing is
complete.

Though
there are often long term health consequences, the immediate health
problems that may occur during or soon after all three types of genital
mutilation are:

Shock

Infection

HIV infection

Hepatitis B

Broken bones

Failure of healing

Tetanus

Septicemia (blood
poisoning)

Injury or trauma to
adjoining structures

Psychological
trauma

Hemorrhage

Burning on
urination

Urine retention

Death

Reasons
for immediate health consequences

The
health consequences of FGM are partly the result of the practice being
performed with blunt and/or unsterile instruments, unsterile conditions,
and unskilled practitioners. These conditions can lead to the wounded
areas of the vulva becoming infected, and if the infected area is not
treated correctly, healing is delayed and the young girl may contract
septicemia (blood poisoning). Septicemia occurs when bacteria from the
infection get into the blood stream.

Often no
anagesis is used and the young girl experiences great pain which can
cause her to scream and cry even after the mutilation is completed. The
severe pain may also cause her to go into shock; she may faint and
remain unconscious. As the mutilation is performed in the presence of
women whom she knows and trusts, the girl may become anxious, depressed,
and fearful about their betrayal of her well-being.

Another
serious form of infection is tetanus, which often follows within 14 days
from the time of the cutting and which specifically results from
infection of the nervous system by the tetanus bacteria. Mortality may
be as high as 50-60 percent, with most deaths occurring within ten days.
Tetanus is more prevalent among people in geographic areas where
immunization has been inadequate.

Genital
mutilation is usually performed on young girls when the vulva is small.
The instruments used for cutting may be too large or blunt, and the
person performing the surgery may cut too deeply or cut and injure
delicate adjoining structures such as the anus or the urethra or
tendons.

There
are many blood vessels in the vulva. Hemorrhage, and excessive loss of
blood, can result from injury to the vulva or from cutting of a blood
vessel in the area. Hemorrhage can cause the young girl or woman to go
into shock, and if untreated she may die. Burning on urination and urine
retention are very common in the first two to four days after excision
and infibulation because of the pain resulting from the urine touching
the wound. Or, urine flow can also sometimes be blocked by a fold of
skin or a blood clot. If the young girl or woman does not urinate, this
can lead to bladder and urinary tract infections.81

LEARNING
MORE

Selected
Reading — FGM

Walker,
Alice. Possessing the Secret of Joy.
Orlando, Florida: Harcourt Brace, 1992.Compelling novel by Alice Walker;
does an excellent job of portraying the lifelong damage done to women as
well as the cultural conflicts which perpetuate the practice.

Walker,
Alice and Parmar, Pratibha. Warrior Marks, Female Genital Mutilation
and the Sexual Blinding of Women. New York: Harcourt
Brace, 1993.Chronicles the making of a documentary on FGM, interviews with
people both concerned with and affected by FGM.

Female
Genital Mutilation. Module 10 in series - A Training Course in
Women’s Health. Institute for Development Training, Chapel Hill, NC. Self-instructional
training manual on practice and consequences of FGM.

WIN
NEWS, Women’s International Network
187 Grant Street
Lexington, MA 02173; (617) 862-9431
Fran Hoskin-editor. Quarterly publication which includes
events, legislation, actions and organizations all over the world. Great
resource for keeping up with international developments affecting women.
Dedicated to eliminating FGM for almost two decades.

Documentaries

Warrior
Marks
Alice Walker and Pratibha Parmar (made in Africa - many interviews
with women concerned with and affected by the practice of FGM in various
countries).

Since men
wield the world’s political power and are the perpetrators of violence
against women, it will be very difficult to eradicate violence without
the cooperation and active support of men. Some men recognize this and
have made an active commitment to educating and organizing their
brothers in order to change things. Across the U.S. there are many local
men’s groups working to prevent rape and violence and to counsel and
treat men who batter. Many campuses now have escort services staffed by
male student volunteers who accompany women at night to their dorms from
libraries and other campus centers. Men’s groups in both the Boston
area and the San Francisco Bay area have been especially active and have
served as models for other programs around the country.

Following
is a listing of some men’s organizations working to eliminate violence
against women:

Ending
Men’s Violence Network
(National Organization for Men)
Homepage: http://www.spacestar.com/users/abtnomas/
violence.htmI nitiated Brotherpeace, which sponsors an international day of men
taking action to end men’s violence.

Men
Against Domestic Violence
Attn: Babatunde Folayerni
814 Laguna St.
Santa Barbara, CA 93101
e-mail: Janet Murphy, http://www.silcom.com/~paladin/madv/Coalition of men working to address issues of domestic violence.
They see violence against women as a men’s issue.

Men
Against PornographyP.O. Box 150786
Brooklyn, NY 11215-0786Men Against Pornography is a group of profeminist men in New York
City who want to help create sexual justice and who believe that
pornography stands in the way of it. Since our founding in 1984,
we have received numerous requests for help in assisting men to deal
honestly and openly with pornography. In addition to leading
workshops and initiating protests, members of Men Against Pornography
have been featured on many local and national TV and radio broadcasts,
including Donahue and Sally Jessy Raphael, and in periodicals such as Ms,
Changing Men, and The Activist Men’s Journal.

Men’s
Rape Prevention Project
2111 Florida Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20008
Tel: (202) 265-6530
e-mail: mardc@womensnet.orgServing DC and the Mid-Atlantic states since 1987, MRPP is a
profeminist organization challenging expressions of male domination by
working to prevent rape and other forms of male violence. Through
community education, consulting, research and public action, MRPP
supports men by providing them with resources and opportunities to
challenge themselves and others to end sexual violence; commonly known
as DC Men Against Rape.

Meninist
— “We are the Same”
P.O. Box 20553
Cherokee Station
New York, NY 10021-0070
Homepage: http://www.feminist.com/men.htmA global organization of men that believes in a woman’s right for
equality in society . . . especially in the workplace. The
organization works: a) to oppose all macho behavior and obscene
sexist attitudes; b) for reproductive freedom and women’s own control
over their bodies; c) to oppose all violence against women including
rape, sexual harassment and domestic violence, as well as negative
stereotypes and violence against women in film, television and
advertising; d) for male participation in ending 2000 years of
patriarchy, supporting women and sharing household and parenting
responsibilities; e) for same work, same pay.

Mentors
in Violence Prevention ProjectJackson Katz
716 Columbus Place, Suite 161
Boston, MA 02120
Tel:(617) 373-4256, ext. 4025
Fax: (617) 373-4566This program targets male athletes because they have visibility and
status, and trains them to be peer educators. The purpose is to help men
understand and take responsibility for stopping violence against women.
Graduates of the program often go into public schools to speak with
younger men about these issues. This pilot project of Northeastern
University’s Center for the Study of Sport in Society was funded by
the U.S. Dept. of Education’s Fund for the Improvement of
Postsecondary Education (FIPSE). Organizers hope it will serve as a
model for programs in universities across the country.

Benecke,
T. Men on Rape: What They Have to Say About Sexual Violence.
New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1982. Early pro-feminist
men’s classic. Integrates interviews with analysis of male anger and
sexual violence.

Funk,
Rus Ervin. Stopping Rape: A Challenge For Men. Philadelphia: New
Society Publishers, 1993.An excellent introduction to the concept of rape as a men’s issue.
Includes concrete suggestions for strategies to involve men in anti-rape
education.

Kimmel,
M. and Mosmiller, T. (eds.) Against the Tide: Pro-Feminist Men in the
United States, 1776-1990. Boston: Beacon Press, 1992. An
indispensable documentary history featuring classic and contemporary
pro-feminist men’s writing, from Thomas Paine to John Lennon.

Kivel,
P. Men’s Work: How to Stop the Violence That Tears Our Lives Apart.
New York: Ballantine Books, 1992. An enormously useful
examination of some of the cultural, racial, and ethnic roots of male
violence, by one of the co-founders of the Oakland Men’s Project.
Includes many practical exercises and role plays.

Messner,
Michael. Power at Play: Sports and the Problem of Masculinity. Boston:
Beacon Press, 1992. Introduces readers to the idea of understanding
gender through examining (male) experiences in the sports culture.
Especially appropriate for current and ex-athletes and sports fans.

Miedzian,
M. Boys Will be Boys: Breaking the Link Between Masculinity and
Violence.
New York: Doubleday, 1991. An excellent discussion of the biological
and cultural roots of violent masculinity in the U.S. Required reading
for parents of boys.

Sonkin
Daniel Jay and Durphy, Michael. Learning to Live Without
Violence: A Handbook for Men. Volcano, CA: Volcano
Press, 1989. Provides a clear rationale as well as carefully
spelled out steps for a successful therapeutic program with men who
batter women.

Stoltenberg,
J. Refusing to Be A Man: Essays on Sex and Justice. Portland:
Breitenbush Books, 1990. Powerful essays on male sexual
identity, pornography, and violence by an experienced anti-sexist
activist.

Stoltenberg,
J. The End of Manhood: A Book for Men of Conscience. New York:
Dutton, 1993. The author argues that men who care about gender
justice need to choose between the “myth of manhood” and moral
self-hood. A thoughtful pro-feminist response to the mythopoetic
romanticization of “deep Masculinity.”

Book
list prepared by Jonathan Katz of the
Mentors in Violence Prevention Project

APPENDIX
2. CLERGY AND CHURCHES CONFRONT VIOLENCE

For
some women the only person, outside the family, with whom they would
discuss something as painful and personal as rape, sexual abuse or
domestic violence is their clergy person. For this reason, and because
it is such a prevalent social problem, church people, especially clergy,
need to be informed on the issues of violence against women and need to
be trained to help women confront these problems. For many years
the Rev. Marie M. Fortune has been a moving force and a powerful voice
of reason and conscience in the effort to get churches and clergy to
confront issues of sexual and domestic violence. She pioneered
this work in 1977 by founding the Center for the Prevention of Sexual
and Domestic Violence. The Center is an interreligious,
educational ministry serving both the religious and secular communities,
and publishes a quarterly news journal Working Together. Some
of the Women’s Offices of the national denominations have programs and
resources for confronting different aspects of violence against women. A
partial listing of these follows:

Winters,
Mary S. Laws Against Sexual and Domestic Violence: A Concise Guide
for Clergy and Laity. New York: The Pilgrim Press, 1988.

Excerpts
of Bibliography from Domestic Violence -
A Guide For Clergy, N.J. Dept. of Community Affairs, 1990

VIDEOS

“Not
in My Church”

This
video tells the story of one church faced with the betrayal of trust by
its minister . . . A story that could happened in any church. This
resource will help people deal with the problem of clergy misconduct
involving sexual abuse within the ministerial relationship. A
complete study guide and awareness brochures are included.

“Not
in My Congregation”

Intended
for Jewish audiences, this version of the docudrama “Not in My
Church” includes an introduction by a rabbi, stressing how the subject
affects the Jewish community.

“Hear
Their Cries: Religious Responses to Child Abuse”

This
documentary addresses the role of clergy and lay leaders in preventing
child abuse. This resource includes interviews with Jewish and
Christian clergy and secular professionals, stories of adult survivors
of physical and sexual abuse and a dramatic vignette demonstrating
appropriate responses to disclosure. A complete study guide and
awareness brochures are included.

“Bless
Our Children: Preventing Sexual Abuse”

This
companion piece to “Hear Their Cries: Religious Responses to
Child Abuse” is designed to help churches and synagogues implement a
child abuse prevention curriculum. It is the story of how one
religious community decided to use a curriculum and how they worked to
make it possible. This video shows the process a congregation can
go through to prepare itself, helps allay fears about using curricula
and highlights the importance of abuse prevention in local
congregations. The video is accompanied by 25 awareness
brochure and a study guide.

“Broken
Vows: Religious Perspectives on Domestic Violence”

Explores
the role of Christian and Jewish communities as resources for healing.
Includes stories of formerly battered women and interviews with
shelter workers, clergy, and therapists

All
videos in this list are available from the Center for Prevention of
Sexual and Domestic Violence:

Tel:
(206) 634-1903
Fax: (206) 634-0115

APPENDIX
3. WOMEN TAKING ACTION

Fighting
Back, Standing Up, Speaking Out

Just
as women all over the world have been abused, suppressed, and limited,
they have also come up with bold and creative responses to call
attention to and demand an end to the violence which they experience in
many aspects of their lives.

The
following examples might serve as ideas and inspiration for action:

In
many places women hold “Take Back the Night” demonstrations with
testimonies by rape victims and advocates, information on resources,
actions, legislation etc., candlelight vigils, and marches to areas
where women have been raped.

In
South Africa a man who had raped others in the past was released from
jail after assaulting, stabbing and raping a 59-year-old woman. The Port
Alfred Women’s Association (PAWO) organized an all-woman,
stay-away-from-work demanding that the man be charged for the crime and
that white women in town come to speak with women in the township to
become informed of the problems of the township women. Due to the PAWO
protest, the man was charged with assault (not with rape) but the
township people were so angry that he had to leave the community and
live elsewhere. (NCADV Update June/July 1993)

In
Dhulia (N. Maharashtra State in India) local women have succeeded in
putting an end to wife beating in fifty to one hundred villages. Though
these poor women worked alongside their husbands in farming and
organizing for fair wages, their husbands still came home and beat them
up. The women organized themselves and “marched on the local
brewery, broke the pots and bottles of liquor, and threatened to tie up
anyone who dared brew liquor again.... When any man beat his wife, the
other women marched to the house and compelled him to apologize to his
wife, promising never to beat her again. When one of the women
agricultural laborers was raped by a landowner
she denounced him in her own and other villages. The women then dragged
the landowner out of his house, smeared him with cow dung and black
soot, made him sit on a donkey and took him around to all the
villages.” (“Women and Health,” Agha Khan UNICEF paper, p. 51)

In
certain barrios in Lima, Peru women demonstrated directly in front of
houses where domestic violence was known to occur, resulting in some
decrease in wife abuse.(One
World, October 1991)

“By
forging grief into rage into action, a few politically inexperienced
Argentinean women have built an internationally respected human rights
movement. It began 17 years ago, when a small group of homemakers dared
to gather in Buenos Aires’s Plaza de Mayo, protesting the
disappearance — and probable deaths — of their daughters and sons at
the hand of the military regime. Since then, the mothers have marched
weekly, risking their lives to demand answers, even after one of their
leaders, Azucena de De Vincente, was ‘disappeared’ in 1977. ‘Maybe
it was because we gave birth to our children that we forgot about the
fear,’ says Juana Pagament. Although the junta was replaced by a
democratic government in 1983, only a few of its leaders have been
prosecuted for the reign of terror, during which 30,000 people were
kidnapped, jailed, tortured, or killed. So the mothers still march,
commemorating their children by calling for justice.” (Ms.
Jan./Feb 1995 p. 73)

Similar
groups were formed in other Latin American countries where military
dictatorships ruled during much of the 1970s and 80s. In Guatemala,
where today the military continues to kidnap and kill dissidents, the
organization Grupo de Apoyo Mutuo (GAM) was formed by women who kept
seeing each other in morgues as they were searching for “disappeared”
loved ones. Several members of this group have been kidnapped, tortured,
and killed just for demanding information and speaking out about missing
friends and family members.

From
the time of the suffragists, women have used fasting and hunger strikes
to call attention to social and political injustice. In Guatemala
recently, through a public fast, Jennifer Harbury was able to gain
international support in her efforts to force the Guatemalan government
to release information about the murder of her husband by security
forces.

In
London a battered woman, Sara Thornton, went on a three week hunger
strike when the same court which gave her a life sentence for killing
her abusive husband acquitted a man for killing his wife. As a result of
her efforts a nationwide campaign was begun to reform England’s 1957
Homicide Act. (Ms. Nov./Dec. 1991)

Popular
theater has been used by women in many countries as an educational and
organizing tool.

“In
Kingston, Jamaica, three groups use popular theater for prevention
education on gender violence. The artistic collective Sisternuses
interactive workshops and street theater to prompt discussions on issues
of domestic violence and rape.The Women’s Media Watch
protests violence and objectionable portrayals of women in the media and
uses theater work with young people to help them grapple with complex
questions relating to sexuality and sexual violence. Teens in Action,
a community group formed after the brutal rape and murder of a young
girl, performs drama to encourage critical reflection in their
neighborhood on issues of sexuality, male/female relationships, and rape.
(Violence Against
Women - the Hidden Health Burden, Lori Heise, p. 37)

Taking
Care Of Business — Working To Change The System

Women all
over the world have worked for years to gain legal rights and
protection, and to sensitize public officials and institutions to the
need for special treatment for victims of rape and domestic violence.
In many countries they have succeeded in changing the
institutional response to these problems.

One of
the most important measures which has been adopted in many places is the
formation of women-only police stations, “an innovation that has
spread from Brazil to Colombia, Uruguay, Peru, Costa Rica and
Argentina.” Though there are also problems with these stations, they
do make it easier and thus more likely that women will report abuse. In
Brazil where there are at least 125 such stations, “Because they
encourage women to come forward, they have helped deter violence among
men who worry about being reported to the police.”

“In
Malaysia the Joint Action Group Against Violence Against Women organized
a major media campaign against rape, initiated dialogue with the police
and the medical professions, and successfully lobbied for the creation
of women-only rape teams on the police force.”

“In
the U.S. feminist lawyers organized the Judicial Education Program to
Promote Equality for Women and Men in the Courts,” which has
gotten half the states to set up “gender bias” task forces to
“detect and attack sexism in the courts.” The “devastating
testimony by victims of abuse about their mistreatment in the courts has
resulted in the recall of some judges and increased training for
prosecutors and judges.”

“In
Harare, Zimbabwe, The Musassa Project works with local police and
prosecutors to sensitize them to issues of domestic violence and
rape.”

For the
past few decades women have been organizing safe spaces for their
sisters who have suffered violent abuse. Both rape crisis centers and
battered women’s shelters have provided women with protection, legal
assistance, and other forms of support. Though many of these centers now
have public support from local governments, most began as grassroots
efforts — often in people’s homes. These movements began in
developed countries but are spreading to other parts of the world.

After
women survive trauma or get out of violent situations, they need help
to integrate and heal from their experiences. Many creative things are
being done by women to facilitate this process:

In
Guayaquil, Ecuador, the Centro de Acción de la Mujer works with the
Laubach Literacy Project to provide legal counsel, job skills and
literacy training to victims of violence. One of the most popular
programs is the creative writing workshop which provides women the
opportunity to heal by writing about their experiences. This program has
helped many women develop confidence and self esteem. Emelda
Valdez, a former “battered woman” who participated in the project,
has now become a published poet and is going to law school so she can
help other women in violent situations. (Ed Griffin-Nolan,
freelance writer)

In
Canada, where eight out of ten aboriginal women experience family
violence, women of the Hollow Water Reserve in Manitoba began using the
traditional Circle of Healing as a way to deal with violence in their
communities. They involved elders and spiritual leaders as a way to get
through to men and to help with their healing. “Aboriginal people
believe that violence is a learned behavior and that it must be
unlearned. So, in dealing with violence against women, they emphasize
the need to heal the whole community and to develop holistic, culturally
appropriate, community based solutions based on the traditional ‘four
directions’: honesty, kindness, sharing, and strength.” The
Circle of Healing is now being used by many aboriginal groups in Canada.
(“Linking Global Strategies to End Violence,” Match
International, p. 10-17)

In
December 1990 with the Gulf War imminent, women from many countries
organized “The Women’s Ship for Peace,” which sailed from Algiers
carrying medicine, sugar, and powdered milk for Iraqi children.”
Though the women were delayed, threatened, harassed, and attacked by
soldiers of different countries they were able to make a small
contribution and a great gesture in the face of the total devastation of
that war. (Ms. March/April 1991)

Women
have made many efforts to reach out and help one another
heal through various types of women’s spaces: bookstores, coffee
shops, music festivals, retreat centers, etc. Music is always a
wonderful vehicle for healing. At “New Song” festivals women from
different sides of political conflicts perform together. Women from
Israel and Palestine have performed on stage together, as have Irish
Catholics and Protestants, and black and white women from South Africa.

Though
women need to heal their lives and move beyond their suffering, it is
important that we always remember and honor those women who have died as
a result of violence.

Often
people remember rape victims by marking the scene of the attack with
crosses or other symbols. For example, in Chapel Hill, North
Carolina, where a woman was shot to death by her assailant near a busy
jogging trail, activists memorialized the spot by placing flowers,
wreaths, notes, photos, and candles.

The
National Coalition Against Domestic Violence is creating a national
registry to increase public awareness of domestic violence.

In
the Sept./Oct. 1994 issue of Ms. the names of women victims of domestic
violence were printed on the cover, front and back.

The
Clothesline Project was begun by a group of women in Massachusetts in
1990 as a visual display to bear witness to violence against women.
A clothesline is hung with tee-shirts decorated to represent a
particular woman’s experience, by the survivor herself or someone who
cares about her. The purpose is four-fold.

1. To
bear witness to the survivors as well as the victims of the war against
women;

2. To
help with the healing process for survivors and families who have lost a
loved one;

3. To
educate, document, and raise society’s awareness of the extent of the
problem of violence against women;

4. To
provide a nationwide network of support, encouragement and information
for other communities starting their own Clothesline Project.

There are
now Clothesline Projects across the country and around the world.
Contact:

There
are growing efforts to build bridges between the North and South so that
organizations all over the world can work together, sharing experiences,
energy and strategies to stop violence against women. Following are just
a few of the organizations working on violence against women from an
international perspective:

Boston
Women’s Health Book Collective
240 A. Elm Street (3rd Floor)
Somerville, MA 02144
Tel: (617) 625-0271 Fax: (617) 625-0294
Homepage: http://www.primenet.com/~bandd/cryo/
boston.htmlThe Boston Women’s Health Book Collective is a non-profit women’s
health education, advocacy and consulting organization. Since the
mid-70s BWHBC has been part of the women’s health movement,
maintaining links with health networks and women’s groups throughout
the world. The groundbreaking Our Bodies, Ourselves was
first published by BWHBC in 1971 and has been adapted and translated
into more than a dozen languages.

Center
for Women’s Leadership
27 Clifton Avenue
New Brunswick, NJ 08901
Tel: (908) 932-8782 Fax: (908) 932-1180
e-mail: cwg@igc.apc.orgThe Center embraces the concerns of women from diverse regions and
ethnic backgrounds with a focus on topics critical to women’s lives
globally. Each June the Center holds a Woman’s Global Leadership
Institute — a number ofparticipants testified at the International Hearing in New York which
was the basis for the video that accompanies this guide.

Health
and Development Policy Project
6930 Carroll Ave., Suite 430
Takoma park, MD 20912
Tel: (301) 270-1182 Fax: (301)
270-2052
e-mail: lheise@igc.apc.orgThe Health and Development Policy Project (HDPP) is a research and
advocacy organization dedicated to integrating concern for gender and
social justice into international health policy and practice. HDPP’s
Gender Violence Initiative works to improve the quality and quantity of
research available worldwide on violence against women and to engage
health workers as constructive against in the battle against abuse.

International
Women’s Rights Action Watch (IWRAW); Women, Public Policy and
Development Project
Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs
University of Minnesota
301-19th Ave. South
Minneapolis, MN 55455
Tel: (612) 625-5093 Fax: (612) 624-0068
e-mail: IWRAW@hhh.umn.edu
Homepage coordinator: Ellen Carlson, e-mail: ecarlson@www.hhh.umn.edu
Current URL: http://www.hhh.umn.edu/Centers/ WPP/research.htmlIWRAW is an international network of activists, scholars and
organizations that focus on the advancement of women’s human rights.
The IWRAW project serves this international network by providing
technical assistance and research support for women’s human rights
projects such as law reform and policy advocacy, funding referrals,
giving support to training and public education projects conducted by
nongovernmental groups in developing countries, reviewing and
publicizing the work of the UN Committee on the Elimination of
Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), and supplying information on the
human rights of women to other international human rights bodies. IWRAW
also publishes a quarterly newsletter, Women’s Watch.

MADRE,
Inc.
121 West 27th Street, Room 301
New York, NY 10001
Tel: (212) 627-0444 Fax: (212) 675-3704
e-mail: madre@igc.apc.orgMADRE is a 20,000 member, multi-racial, cross-class, international
women’s organization. Since we began in 1983, the organization has
delivered over $6 million in medical and educational support and
services to women and children in Central America, the Caribbean, the
Middle East, the former Yugoslavia and the United States. MADRE’s
primary objective is to promote the economic and social development and
political empowerment of women. Programs help ensure that
development by working with community-based women’s organizations,
responding to their needs and, when called upon, offering skills
training that will secure their long-term autonomy.

Match
International Centre
401 171 Nepean Street
Ottawa, Ontario K2P 0B4 Canada
Tel: (1) 613-2S8-1312Match International has developed a resource kit “Linking Global
Struggles to End Violence" in which women from developing countries
and Canada share their experiences.

Women’s
International League for Peace and FreedomInternational WILPF
1 rue de Varembé, 4th Floor
1211 Geneva 20, Switzerland
Tel: (41-22) 733-6175 Fax: (41-22)
740-1063
e-mail: womensleague@gn.apc.orgUS Section Office:
1213 Race Street
Philadelphia, PA 19107
Tel: (215) 563-7110 Fax: (215)
563-5527
e-mail: wiipfnatl@igc.apc.orgThe Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom has been
working since 1915 to unite women worldwide who oppose oppression and
exploitation, and militarism. WILPF is an advocacy,
education and activist organization with sections in 32 countries
coordinated by an international office in Geneva.

WIN
(Women’s International Network) NEWS187 Grant Street
Lexington, MA 02173
Tel: (617) 862-9431Quarterly publication which includes events, legislation,
actions and organizations all over the world. Great resource for keeping
up with international developments affecting women. Dedicated to
eliminating FGM for almost two decades.

Women’s
International Public Health Network (WIPHN)
7100 Oak Forest Lane
Bethesda, MD 20817
Tel: (301) 469-9210 Fax: (301) 469-8423
WIPHN provides women in the field of public health with an opportunity
to work together to improve women’s health worldwide.

In many
countries women have successfully lobbied for laws to protect
women and prosecute perpetrators of rape, wife abuse, etc. While laws
seldom address the root cause, they at least signal recognition of
issues. There are still problems with interpretation and
enforcement but many countries have improved their laws in recent years
regarding the treatment of women.

Some
encouraging examples are:

Mexico
has revised its rape law, making rape a crime against morality (instead
of a violation of freedom), greatly expanding the definition of rape,
and eliminating the clause which protected men who rape minors from
prosecution if they agreed to marry the victim.

In the
Philippines 14 women’s groups worked together to get a very
progressive rape law introduced in Congress with an expanded definition
of rape defining rape as a crime against the person (not her chastity).

“A
growing number of governments, including some in the developing world
(the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Malaysia, Puerto Rico), have passed laws
or reformed their penal codes to criminalize domestic violence. And
a substantial number of countries — including Argentina, Bolivia,
Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela — have bills
under consideration (as of 1993).

In the
U.S. the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) of 1994 was signed into law
by President Clinton on September 13. Congress allocated 1.6 billion
dollars over the next six years for provisions which include:

Improved
law enforcement, prosecution, and victim services in cases of violent
crimes against women.

A
national domestic violence hotline.

Increased
security on the streets, in public transportation, and in public spaces.

On June
7, 1995 the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution offered by
Rep. Pat Schroeder, urging the President to help end the practice of
female genital mutilation. The resolution urges the President to
actively encourage other nations where female genital mutilation takes
place to create clear policies against it, enforce laws banning it and
provide education and counseling about its dangers. It also urges the
President to ensure that international programs in which the United
States participates include an FGM component.

According
to Representative Schroeder“This is the first time Congress has
recognized that women’s rights are human rights.”

The
Federal Prohibition of Female Genital Mutilation Act

On
February 14, a bipartisan group of House members led by Representative
Pat Schroeder introduced H.R. 941, The Federal Prohibition of Female
Genital Mutilation Act of 1995 which criminalizes FGM for girls
younger than 18 and requires Health and Human Services to identify and
educate communities in this country that practice FGM, make
recommendations to medical schools for treatment of its complications,
and compile statistics on women living here who have undergone it. This
bill passed in 1996 under the immigration clause of Women’s Health
Equity Act.

Lottenberg
Amendment
Domestic Violence Gun Ban Bill

In
September 1996 this controversial amendment passed as a rider to the
Federal Budget. Basically, it states that public law enforcement
personnel who have been convicted of an act of domestic violence cannot
carry a firearm. The surprise repercussion has been that dozens of
policemen across the country have had to turn in their weapons because
they have domestic violence convictions on their records. Commentators
on a recent television special suggested that when put into practice
across the country there will be thousands of officers who can no longer
carry weapons. One of the most controversial aspects of the
amendment is the retroactive aspect. Rep. Barr of Georgia is
introducing an amendment to minimize or remove the current amendment,
which will be debated by a joint session of Congress.

H.R.
1191 and S. 524 Victims of Abuse Access to Health Insurance Act

(Introduced
by Rep. Schumer (D-NY) and Senator Wellstone (D-MN) The bill is
designed to prohibit insurance companies from considering domestic
violence as a pre-existing condition and “engaging in a practice that
has the effect of denying, canceling, or limiting health insurance
coverage or health benefits” for victims of domestic violence. Under
this law, companies continuing to engage in this practice can be held
civilly and criminally liable. This bill passed August 21, 1996 as
part of the Kennedy Kassbaum Health Insurance Portability and
Accountability Act.

Legislative
briefs from National Coalition Against Domestic Violence

The Following Legislation Is Pending:

S.282
The Domestic Violence Community Response Team Act

(Introduced
Jan. 26, by Senators Bradley, Hatfield and Wellstone) This bill
would enable communities to develop a comprehensive strategy to
intervene and prevent domestic violence. It would improve and coordinate
the efforts of law enforcement and service programs to assist victims,
provide funding for teams of victim advocates to work with police, and
enable victims to receive on-site support as well as information and
follow-up services.

(Introduced
April 7 by Rep. Wyden (D-OR) Representative Fox (R-PA) and Senator Boxer
(D-CA) The bill provides for the inclusion of information and
training in domestic violence in the curriculum of medical schools and
other health professions. Under this amendment to the Public
Health Services Act, schools would need to provide “significant
training” for students in “identifying, examining, treating and
referring patients who are victims of domestic violence” in order to
gain a preferential status for receiving federal funds. (Will be
reintroduced in 105 Congress – 1997)

The
International Front

Women
NGO delegates to the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights helped draft
the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women
which was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in December
1993. Though most observers recognize shortcomings in the document, it
is considered a landmark because it “is the first universal legal
instrument aimed specifically at combatting violence against women and
putting that abuse on the map of international human rights
legislation.” The declaration broadly defines what constitutes
an act of violence against women and calls on governments and the
international community to take specific measures to prevent such acts.
(Women U.N. background paper)

(The
United Nations is a huge, unwieldy bureaucracy with tremendous internal
contradictions in terms of the treatment of U.N. spouses and
female staff. Also the U.N. has no real power to enforce it’s various
treaties, covenants and instruments, but they are symbolically
significant, and set a standard toward which to aim.)

ISIS
International prepared this outline of the major United Nations
instruments which deal with women’s human rights:

U.N. Universal
Declaration of Human Rights (1948) plus two International Covenants
(economic, social and cultural rights; civil and political rights).
These are statements of principal.

U.N. Human Rights
Treaties. Once conventions are approved by the U.N. General Assembly
and enter into force, they must be ratified by individual member
states.

Convention on the
Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).
Adopted in 1979 and serviced by the Vienna based Branch for the
Advancement of Women. (has been accepted by 133 countries
though many countries have placed reservations on key areas which
conflict with religious or cultural views especially with regard to
marriage and family law - an area notorious for discrimination
against women (from Women - UN Background Paper).

Conventions against
Genocide; Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment;
Traffic in Persons and the Exploitation and Prostitution of Others;
Racial Discrimination, etc. Also, the four 1949 Geneva
Conventions, which establish humanitarian rules applicable to
international armed conflicts.

U.N.
Commissions. These Geneva based information and policy recommendation
programs have no mechanism for implementation:

Commission on the
Status of Women (CSW)

Commission on Human
Rights

U.N. International
Court of Justice. Based in the Hague, Netherlands and
successor to the World Court, it hears questions of international
law

(Women’s
Health Journal 1/93 ISIS International)

APPENDIX
6. THE INTERNET AND ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATION

Women
in Cyberspace

As the
Internet has grown almost exponentially in the past few years, the
participation of and impact on women’s organizations has been
remarkable. Increasingly, women’s groups around the world are using
electronic communication both for accessing information and for
networking around specific issues and events. Electronic communication
played a critical role in the planning and organizing of the Fourth
World Conference on Women held in Beijing in September 1995. The
computer center organized by the Association for Progressive
Communication (APC) was one of the most vital areas of the conference.

The Plan
for Action adopted at the Beijing Conference recognized the significance
of the rapid increase and changes in the realm of electronic
technologies, and addressed both the positive possibilities and
potential problems which these new technologies present to women. The
cyber revolution has tremendous potential for democratizing access
to and use of information by women’s organizations and other
marginalized groups in society. The challenge is to insure equal access
to equipment, training, time, and other resources necessary to fully
utilize the technology.

These
issues have been the focus of several international conferences hosted
by organizations such as ISIS International, World Association for
Christian Communication, and International Women’s Tribune Center.
UNESCO and the Society for International Development have a joint
project “Women and Cyberculture” which looks at the Internet and
other aspects of global communications from a gender perspective.

Through a
project called WomenWatch, The United Nations is using an electronic
format to provide followup information on the Beijing conference as well
as examining ways women’s groups around the world can use the
“Information Superhighway” as a networking tool. Womenwatch is a
joint effort of the International Training and Research Institute for
Women, the United Nations Development Fund and the Division for the
Advancement of Women, the three UN Bodies which primarily deal with
women’s issues.

In
June 1996 experts at a WomenWatch workshop look- ed at ways to
make electronic communications more effective for empowering women’s
groups and issues. The experts determined that “a key aspect of
WomenWatch will be to define the need for and coordinate electronic
conferencing and bulletin boards to facilitate interactive feedback for
users.” Since e-mail was recognized as the primary working tool
for the majority of women users of electronic communication systems....
“Internet query mechanisms will also be established for E-mail-only
users. The information will be organized in an Internet-accessible
database to allow users in developing countries who do not have direct
access to all Internet tools to retrieve the information. WomenWatch
will develop partnerships with various groups that repackage and
redisseminate information to women’s organizations and resource
centers in locations with no Internet access. It will also work closely
with organizations that provide training for women in the use of the new
technologies."82

Virtual
Sisterhood is a global women’s electronic support network,
dedicated to strengthening and magnifying the impact of feminist
organizing through promotion of electronic communications use within the
global women’s movement.

FEMINIST.COM
Homepage: http://www.feminist.com/natn.htm
FEMINIST.com is a site aimed at helping women network more effectively
on the Internet. Includes the abridged text of articles and speeches,
women’s health resources, women-owned businesses, and more.

WomensNet@igc
Homepage: http://www.igc.apc.org/Womensnet
WomensNet is a non-profit computer network for women, activists, and
organizations using computer networks for information sharing and
increasing women’s rights. WomensNet provides e-mail accounts,
Internet access, WWW publishing, consulting and training. Site contains
WomensNet’s online newsletter and descriptions of projects in which
the group is currently involved.

In
the January 1997 issue of Ms.
Magazine these two books were recommended for helping women tackle the
Internet:

CRLP:
Women of the World
Homepage: http://www.echonyc.com/-jmkm/ wotw/
This site provided by the Center for Reproductive Law & Policy,
Inc., provides a review of women’s reproductive freedom in six
countries around the world.

Internet
Resources for Women’s Legal and Public Policy Information
Homepage: http://asa.ugl.lib.umich.edu/chdocs/
womenpolicy/womenlawpolicy.htmlGuide at the University of Michigan intended to assist individuals
seeking information related to women’s and feminist legal, public
policy, and political issues. Included are Gopher, WWW, and ftp sites,
as well as listservers and Usenet newsgroups. An ACSII version of the
index is available for download, if you want, a hardcopy of the URLS is
provided.

The
Legal Rights of Women
Homepage: http://www.electriciti.com/womenrts/Legal Rights of Women is a legal reference text. This is the abridged
version of the printed book; ordering information is provided if you
like what you see. The purpose of this text is to bring to one source
the legal principles most affecting the personal business, family, and
civil rights of women.

WIDNET
(Women in Development NETwork)
Homepage: http://www.synapse.net/~focusint/The WIDNET site presents information pertaining to women’s
resources throughout the Internet. Also includes the WIDNET
magazine, a searchable resource database, business contacts, and much
more. In English and French.

Women
in the Law Project
Tel: (202) 232-8500
e-mail: lawgroup@igc.apc.org

The
following is a “crash course” for surfing the Net and dancing in
Cyberspace

These key
terms were taken from Women 2000 Women and the Information Revolution
October 1996 * No. 1 1996.

Key
Terms

Computer
networking technologies (CNTs): The various tools being
developed for electronic dissemination of information.

Domain:
A method of identifying computer addresses on the Internet.
Typically the name of an institution or entity followed by a “dot”
and an abbreviation, e.g., “gov” for governments, “edu” for
educational institutions, “com” for companies, “net” for
networks or “org” for organizations.

Electronic
conference or bulletin board: A collection of messages related
to a particular topic.

Electronic
mailing list (also called Listserv): A list of E-mail addresses of
people who regularly communicate with each other. You can subscribe to
receive messages automatically by sending a request via electronic mail
to a specified address.

E-mail:
Short for “electronic mail,” it’s like a letter, a message that
one person can send and have received almost instantaneously by someone
anywhere in the world via computers and modems using telephone lines.

Gopher:
A menu system that organizes and provides easy access to information
available on the Internet. The gopher can help you locate information,
download files and search databases.

Home
page: A Web screen that acts as a starting point. A user can go from
a home page to multiple sites across the world’s computer networks.

HTTP
(Hypertext transfer protocol): The Internet standard that enables
information to be distributed across the Web using hypertext markup
language (HTML) to upload information.

Internet
(The Net): A global network of computers that makes it possible to
share information electronically. It offers both one-way communication
and “virtual” interactive communication. It allows networking,
conferencing, commercial transactions, shopping, banking and publishing.
The most popular uses of the Net are E-mail and the World Wide Web
(WWW).

Modem:
Either an internal or external attachment to your computer that allows
you to transmit or receive data through your phone lines. The name is
short of modulator-demodulator.

Newsgroup:
A single forum for discussion on Usernet. A newsgroup’s name denotes
the appropriate topic of conversation in that newsgroup. For instance,
“comp.sys.mac.comm” is for discussion of communications on the
Macintosh computer system; “sci/physics.research” is for discussion
of research in physics. The contents of a newsgroup consist of postings
— individual messages, submitted from anywhere on the Internet.

On
line: On or actively connected to a computer network.

URL
(Universal Resource Locators): On the World Wide Web, a URL can be
thought of as a road map for accessing a specific resource, such as a
Web page or gopher site. URLs express the type of resource to be
accessed, the specific site where the information is stored and where at
the site the information is located. Many URLs begin with the characters
http://, gopher://, or ftp://.

Web
browser: Enables users of the Internet to discover, retrieve and
display documents and data available on the WWW. Web browsers
allow the user to view selectively hypertext documents, access powerful
text-searching tools, listen to sound files, and view graphics,
animation and video across the Internet.

World
Wide Web (WWW): Originally a project developed by CERN (European
Laboratory for Particle Physics) for sharing information within
internationally dispersed teams over computer networks. It allows text
and graphics to be shared with anyone else on the network. The WWW is
one of the fastest growing areas in the field of computer-mediated
communications. It is estimated that there are over 400,000 Web sites.

13.Domestic
Violence - A Guide for Clergy, Third Edition, October 1990. Written by
Deborah J. Pope-Lance and Joan Chamberlain Engelsman Womanspace, Inc.,
for New Jersey Dept. of Community Affairs, p. 11.

26.Domestic
Violence - A Guide for Clergy, Third Edition, October 1990. Written
by Deborah J. Pope-Lance and Joan Chamberlain Engelsman Womanspace,
Inc., for New Jersey Dept. of Community Affairs, pp. 7-9.

41a&b.Chung
Chin Sung, “Testimonies on War Crimes Against Women in Conflict
Situations,” Testimonies of the Global Tribunal on Violations of
Women’s Human Rights at the United Nations World Conference on Human
Rights. Vienna, June 1993.

82.Women and
the Information Revolution – Women 2000. Oct. 1996 No 1/1996,
published by United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women/DPCSD.

ABOUT
THE HEARING AND THE PARTICIPANTS

The
International Hearing on Violence Against Women was held February 19,
1993 at the Church Center for the United Nations. The hearing was
organized by the Center for Women’s Global Leadership, Douglass
College at Rutgers University, the International Women’s Tribune
Center, and the United Methodist Office for the United Nations. The
hearing, which was part of an international campaign to bring
issues of violence against women, and women’s rights into the
international arena, brought together twenty speakers and respondents
from Asia, Africa, North America, Latin America and the Caribbean.
All the women raised common tragic themes of laws
specifically designed to control women’s behavior; economic
exploitation, rape, battery, sexual slavery, torture, murder and genital
mutilation.

4.Missouri
Sherman-Peter - The Bahamas Minister, Counsellor, Permanent Mission of
the Commonwealth of Bahamas to UN.

*appeared
in unabridged video of hearing

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

IDT would
like to thank everyone who contributed to bringing this many-staged
project to fruition. We particularly want to thank Jeanne Betsock
Stillman for her initiative and dedicated efforts in getting the
hearings taped.

We
are grateful to Else Mia Adjali of the United Methodist Office for the
United Nations for initial funding of the editing phase, and to
Elizabeth Calvin of the United Methodist Church Board of Global
Missions, who provided funding to help make the resource guide possible.
Thanks also to Charlotte Bunch and Anne Walker
for helping arrange to film the hearing, and to Niamh Reilly and Meera
Singh for coordinating with IDT.

We
are especially grateful to Tom Payne, Gregory Wendt and their colleagues
from the Planetary Issues Network who without compensation filmed and
recorded the hearing. We also want to thank George Serles for imput and
assistance on early stages of the video and Allison Best-Teague of
Southern Sisters, Inc. bookstore in Durham, NC and Meera Singh for help
with the reference list.

For
producing the final video, we want to thank the staff and crew of the
Empowerment Project; and for patience and flexibility, we thank Byte
Type Publishing Services of Chapel Hill, North Carolina for the design
and typesetting of this resource guide.

Special
thanks to Dr. Richard Slatta, history professor extraordinnare for
pointing out the importance and need for including Internet resources
and e-mail addresses. Warm sincere gratitude to Win Utermoehlen
for infinite patience and tremendous help in accessing those resources
and learning to “surf the net.”

Most
especially we are grateful to all the women who testified for their
commitment and courage and for the work they do on behalf of other women
in their countries and communities.